The True History of the Blackadder: The Unadulterated Tale of the Creation of a Comedy Legend

by J. F. Roberts

  GERALDINE:

  No, no it isn’t. I’d just like to share with you the fact that, well, I hate the people of this village.

  ALICE:

  Oh dear.

  GERALDINE:

  Yeah. Every single one of them. Self-righteous, small-minded, senile, chocolate-scoffing gits and that’s true.

  The phone rings, Alice answers.

  ALICE:

  Hello, Geraldine’s phone. Well, not actually her phone, because the phone can’t speak, but Geraldine’s phone meaning Geraldine is usually the person on the phone – even though actually this time it’s Alice – so I might have said ‘Alice’s phone,’ but I didn’t because it’s not mine.

  GERALDINE:

  Who is it?

  ALICE:

  I don’t know, they just hung up.

  It would be wrong to over-egg the Blackadder comparisons, of course, not least because, having set up his new situation in the pilot, Curtis was quick to bring in new co-writers to help him pen the programme, including Kit Hesketh-Harvey and, above all, Paul Mayhew-Archer. Besides remaining loyal to radio production (helming both Radio Active and I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue), Mayhew-Archer was a mainstay of family sitcom, with mainstream fare like Nelson’s Column, An Actor’s Life for Me and My Hero on his CV, and for most of Dibley’s thirteen years of existence, he and Richard developed such a seamless partnership, a kind of invisible collaboration where Elton’s work with Curtis had been explosive, that it became impossible to tell who had written what.

  Perhaps one of the few remaining Blackadder parallels, as with Mr Bean, was the musical input from Goodall, whose reputation grew as he complemented his career as a composer by moving in front of the camera, as the authoritative but playful presenter of his own programmes, including Howard Goodall’s Choir Works and 20th Century Greats. Having specialised in devotional music, his rearrangement of ‘The Lord Is My Shepherd’ for Dibley came naturally, but as the maestro for a wealth of shows including Red Dwarf there was little he couldn’t turn his hand to, so it was natural for Ben Elton to turn to Howard when he needed a jolly, whistled theme tune for his solo sitcom venture, The Thin Blue Line.

  It had been the best part of a decade since Elton had created a new sitcom, but since Saturday Live his TV work had gone from strength to strength, with his stand-up vehicle The Man from Auntie lasting for two series, despite a jocularly acknowledged loss of credibility after standing in for Terry on the early-evening chat show Wogan. As a writer, although his novels continued to appear with insouciant regularity, the nineties had seen a new career as a playwright bloom for Ben, with Laurie perfecting his insufferable yuppie businessman persona in 1990’s Gasping, in which executives attempt to corner the market in designer oxygen. In 1991, Elton finally got his chance to craft a role for Dawn French, as the eponymous gossip columnist in Silly Cow,fn4 and in the following years his novels Popcorn and Blast from the Past would both successfully be adapted for theatre, the former receiving an Olivier Award for best comedy. His new sitcom in 1995, however, was a concerted return to traditional light entertainment. ‘I wanted to write a sitcom I would enjoy to watch, and although I love Seinfeld and Frasier, and gritty abrasive stuff or whatever, my favourite of all is Dad’s Army – although I’m not so arrogant as to think that I can write something like Dad’s Army.’ On the other hand, he adds, ‘I don’t know whether it’s traditional, there’s a lot of stuff in it that isn’t.’

  Elton would never have had any trouble interesting the BBC in a new sitcom, but as Fry suggests, the one crucial ingredient would be its star. ‘Essentially, all you have to do is go in and say, “It’s a sitcom for Rowan Atkinson and Rowan wants to do it,” that’s the only thing you need to do to pitch it!’ After half a decade on mute as Bean, Atkinson jumped at the chance to craft a new sitcom role, taking it to the BBC under the Tiger Aspect banner (like Dibley before it), with Geoffrey Perkins co-producing alongside Elton, and with Rowan’s usual knack for timing, TTBL debuted on pre-watershed BBC1 less than a fortnight after the final Mr Bean TV special, in the autumn of 1995.

  Examining the friction between the uniformed plods and deluded detectives of Gasforth (a godforsaken town within the Thames Valley, motto: ‘It’s not as bad as you think!’), TTBL was any character comedian’s dream, but Atkinson was to be the heart of the show, even prefacing each episode with a Dixon of Dock Green-style monologue in series two. The mirroring of Blackadder’s status – this time, rather than being the only modern voice, Rowan played ‘an old-fashioned stick-in-the-mud in a modern situation’ – meant that there would be no mistaking Inspector Raymond Fowler for any Edmund, although perhaps his strained politeness may have had a tang of Ebenezer Blackadder. It might be taking it too far to suggest that Fowler’s anoraky bumbling made the character closer to what Atkinson could have been if he had not been famous, but he was happy to admit, ‘I liked the part immediately because Fowler is a man with some amusing contradictions. He has to live in the modern world but he wishes it was different. Fowler rings bells with me, I can identify with his point of view … The common link between my parts is that they are establishment – soldiers, vicars, policemen – which must relate significantly to my upbringing. You can believe in the establishment but, by gum, there’s a lot to laugh at about it.’

  Initial moans from critics expecting instant Blackadder levels of brilliance centred on the sitcom’s reliance on broad humour and innuendo in the Croft & Perry vein, and also the unoriginal setting, but Elton argued, ‘In comedy the obvious is often very good. You’ve got a vast wealth of background knowledge of television police stations that have gone before. You don’t have to establish anything. It’s just a sitcom full of completely flawed and fumbling but basically decent people … Thank goodness Rowan said yes. I’m always at it like a terrier, but he’s more selective about what he does.’ The humour’s broadness was of course deliberate, and it certainly struck a chord with the average 11 million viewers who tuned in.

  Just as he had slipped Dad’s Army references into Goes Forth, there was a certain level of homage to the classic in TTBL’s central cast. Fowler’s pomposity of course put him in the Captain Mainwaring role, while his begrudging comradeship with CID boss Derek Grim made the latter reminiscent of ARP Warden Hodges, with a parallel pairing of two mutually loathing leaders who are both on the same side.

  GRIM:

  This afternoon officers from this station – CID officers – led by Detective Inspector Grim – i.e. me – will deploy ourselves operationally in a suspect arrest scenario vis-à-vis and apropos of a terrorism containment action in conjunction with operatives and personnel from Special Forces.

  FOWLER:

  … And for those English speakers amongst us?

  GRIM:

  Me and Special Branch are gonna nick a mad bomber. Right, that is all. Kray, Crocket, follow me. (Exits.)

  FOWLER:

  Well, we can only hope that their endeavours are crowned with success. There was a time when I was destined for Special Branch, you know? Oh yes, that was very much what my instructors at Hendon had in mind for me – the drug war, counterterrorism, that sort of thing.

  GOODY:

  What happened, Inspector?

  FOWLER:

  What happened, Goody? A little thing called ordinary policing, that’s what happened. A little thing called the day-to-day business of protecting the public and keeping Her Majesty’s peace. Not glamorous, I dare say. Not ‘sexy’. But what we do in this station every day is every bit as important as preventing a bomb attack!

  GOODY:

  We’re all part of the Thin Blue Line, isn’t that right, Inspector?

  FOWLER:

  That’s right, Goody – the only difference being that your bit of the Thin Blue Line is slightly thicker.

  The relationship between Fowler and clownish Constable Goody was clearly another to be placed in the Blackadder & Baldrick pile, but there was also a shade of the silly boy Pike about the rookie bobby, wh
ile Trinidadian veteran PC Gladstone could be compared to either Jones or Godfrey, as the most senior thorn in Fowler’s side. With Atkinson getting his lips around regular long decorative speeches composed for him by Elton, every episode of TTBL had his usual stamp of quality, but the star had some competition for laughs against David Haig’s astonishingly nuanced portrayal of the dangerously frustrated Derek Grim, with his own show-stopping rants about Fowler’s ‘wishy-washy, diddums, half-cock, up-yer-social-worker, fol-de-rol, blame-it-on-society, psycho, sicko, socio-claptrap-crap!’ Nor was it possible to ignore James Dreyfus as Kevin Goody, debuting a brand of heightened sitcom campery which belied the character’s longing for Mina Anwar’s Constable Maggie Habib, the one real voice of reason in Gasforth.

  The richness of this police line-up was a potent enough recipe for continued success beyond the second series (and a Christmas special featuring Ben as a modern-day Joseph), and the show also garnered a British Comedy Award, but Atkinson decided to lay Fowler to rest at the customary two-series mark. For Elton, TTBL was an undeniable step towards the conventional (the first episode even has Fowler forgetting the anniversary of his relationship with sexually frustrated desk sergeant Patricia Dawkins), but he described the show as ‘the thing I have the most special love for’. In the BBC’s ‘Britain’s Best Sitcom’ rundown, viewers voted TTBL in at number 37, which, arbitrary though these polls are, did put Fowler ahead of sitcom legends like Reggie Perrin, Rab C. Nesbitt, Alan B’Stard and Brian Potter. A concerted campaign by Dibley obsessives, however, zoomed that series in at a flabbergasting number 3, only to be fought off by John Sergeant’s urging to give Blackadder the crown – which was ultimately pipped to second place by the nationally beloved Only Fools and Horses.

  Fry was one other person who was glad for TTBL, as Atkinson was happy to offer his best man his first return to sitcom in six years, popping up at the end of the first series as the blatantly Melchettian Brigadier Blaster-Sump, a dangerous lunatic in a kilt detailed to assist Fowler in leading a camping expedition for criminal youths:

  BRIGADIER:

  My name’s Blaster-Sump, damn you! Now, you play a straight bat with me and you’ll find we’ll rub along pretty well together. Use a bent bat, however, a wobbly bat, a bat with a hole in it and bits sticking out of the end, and by thunder I’ll crush your young testicles beneath the hard granite of the Mull of Ben Craggy!

  HABIB:

  And those of the party who are not equipped with testicles?

  BRIGADIER:

  The victims of tragic accidents, you mean?

  HABIB:

  No, I mean girls!

  BRIGADIER:

  Fortunately I’ve never been called upon to discipline a girl! No, quite the other way round, as a matter of fact …

  FOWLER:

  Brigadier Blaster-Sump?

  BRIGADIER:

  Yes, young lady?

  FOWLER:

  I’m a trained orienteer, as are two of my officers. We wish only to use your equipment.

  BRIDAGIER:

  DAMN YOU, YOU BITCH! Are you telling me I’m orf the team?

  FOWLER:

  Reluctantly, sir, yes.

  BRIGADIER:

  Oh well, probably just as well. I like to sleep naked when I’m out of doors. Don’t want you young ladies getting all flushed and dampened, do we?

  As the Brigadier frightened off the campers with a terrifying lift of his kilt, this evening’s work became not just an episode-stealing cameo appearance, but a crucial step towards comedic rehabilitation for Fry, during what was turning out to be an overwhelming decade for the high achiever.

  A Lot of Fry & Laurie

  Together and apart, the early nineties was a conveyor belt of creativity for Fry & Laurie, both of them featuring in Martin Bergman and Rita Rudner’s sadly maligned Cellar Tapes reunion movie Peter’s Friends – sharing the distinction of being directed by Kenneth Branagh with Eltonfn5. Stephen also joined Ben in adding ‘novelist’ to his list of careers, with early offerings the quasi-autobiographical The Liar and The Hippopotamus garnering especial plaudits, and Hugh followed suit with The Gun Seller, an espionage thriller, in 1996 (though with his typical self-effacement, he refused to send it to publishers under his own name, and was accepted under a pseudonym). Acting remained their main pursuit, though, with Laurie already moving into straight acting in a central role in 1993’s All or Nothing at All, while Fry made a return to historical comedy alongside Geoffrey Palmer and Nicholas Lyndhurst in Stalag Luft, both for ITV. In the latter, David Nobbs took the old POW camp chestnuts – desperate escape plans, and Nazi guards who are as keen to get away as the prisoners – and folded them into one feature-length comedy drama, allowing Fry to portray both a pipe-smoking upper-class wing commander and a heartless Nazi commandant.

  It was while the colleagues were putting together the second series of their BBC sketch show that they were invited to follow Rowan to commercial TV for the biggest challenge of their joint careers – taking on the mantle of perhaps the greatest double act in the history of English literature. Granada TV had recently launched a pitch-perfect adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Poirot stories starring David Suchet, and the winning team of producer Brian Eastman and writer Clive Exton decided that their next bold move would be to return the most beloved creations of the most beloved comic author to the screen. In the fifteen years since Wodehouse had written his last, his celebrated master and servant had sunk so low from their earlier popularity on BBC TV in the guise of Ian Carmichael and Dennis Price that many people knew Jeeves and Bertie only as a grotesque pairing appearing in sherry adverts. Not least thanks to Hugh’s performance in Blackadder, Eastman felt sure that nobody could embody the silly ass Bertram Wilberforce Wooster and his cerebrally blessed gentleman’s personal gentleman Reginald Jeeves quite as well as Fry & Laurie. The duo’s proximity in age may have seemed jarring at first to those who saw the valet as a venerable elder, but Fry’s already infamous reputation as a brainbox was sure to make the relationship believable.

  Wodehouse was a major inspiration for Blackadder – he was after all the original Master of the hilarious simile. But despite being lifelong devotees of Plum’s work, like Elton, Curtis and most of the Blackadder crew,fn6 Fry & Laurie were not quick to accept Granada’s invitation. Taking the effervescent words from the page and translating them into flesh, with poor Stephen trying to personify a man who did not walk, but ‘hovered’ or ‘trickled’, and whose eyebrow was never permitted to rise more than a quarter of an inch at the greatest provocation, seemed a futile weight to heave onto their shoulders. But it only took a disappointed reply from the production team to the effect that they would look elsewhere for Stephen and Hugh to bridle, and bite – if anybody was going to mess it up, they decided, it may as well be themselves. Duly, before series two of ABOF&L even began filming, Laurie had picked up his whangee and pulled on his spats, while Stephen perfected the art of trickling, and Jeeves & Wooster debuted in April 1990.

  In the series, Exton tended to pick and choose from Wodehouse’s short stories and novels, reshaping Bertie’s escapades as the format required, but in doing so he helped to bring whole new generations of readers back to the original prose, albeit with Fry & Laurie in the mind’s eye. The friends made one lushly designed and directed series per year for four years running, to great acclaim – Anne Dudley’s BAFTA-winning music even led to an LP, The World of Jeeves & Wooster, which provided Laurie’s real debut as a recording artist. It’s true that by series four the scripts had taken jarring strides from the source material,fn7 with bizarrely superfluous kangaroos and a climactic chase sequence straight out of Benny Hill, but it is unlikely that any actors will displace Fry & Laurie from the iconic roles in the public imagination for generations to come.

  A Bit of Fry & Laurie came to a close a year or two later, but in even odder circumstances. It had become a quiet success on BBC2, with cherished script books accompanying every series. The duo’s predilection for dressin
g up in period costume remained undimmed, be they warring Victorian lovers, or duellists, with Geoff McGivern playing referee:

  Hugh and Stephen in period dress on a misty heath, about to duel …

  REFEREE:

  Gentlemen, I believe you both know the purpose of this meeting.

  STEPHEN:

  Thank you, Mr Tollerby, but we have no need of explanation. The circumstances are well known to us.

  HUGH:

  Quite right. Let us be about the business.

  STEPHEN:

  The business? Let us be about it …

  REFEREE:

  Very well, gentlemen. Sir David, I understand the choice is yours – sword or pistol?

  HUGH:

  Sword … The only weapon for a gentleman.

  REFEREE:

  Quite so. That means, Mr Van Hoyle, that you have the pistol …

  Fatally, for the fourth series, the pair were plucked from Auntie’s second channel and upgraded to prime-time BBC1 – two sparkling Footlighters guaranteed to bring a chuckle to the nation on Sunday nights. This was despite the controversial seasonal experiment, Christmas Night with the Stars, a year earlier, in which Stephen and Hugh were given the task of fronting an attempt to revive the festive TV entertainment, over twenty years after its cancellation. With Geoff Posner directing, the programme was lined up to be as spectacular as ever, but the hosts’ tongues were poked right through both cheeks as they introduced not just vintage favourites Sandie Shaw and Ronnie Corbett but new comedy stars Reeves & Mortimer, Alan Partridge and their ex-decorators Paul Whitehouse and Charlie Higson, in their Fast Show guises. Middle England families who sat down expecting a straightforward tribute to light entertainment of yore were banjaxed by Fry & Laurie’s gleefully unctuous insincerity and free use of the word ‘cock’, and so many letters of complaint flooded in that Hugh was compelled to respond, ‘I quite understand people feeling excluded from something because they think it’s trying to offend them. I don’t think either of us would set out to do that.’