Make-Up Designer
VICKY POCOCK
Production Assistant
JANE SPOONER
Production Secretary
HILARY CHARLES
Production Manager
SARAH COWERS
Assistant Floor Manager
LINDSAY TRENHOLME
Designer
ANTONY THORPE
Director
RICHARD BODEN
Producer
JOHN LLOYD
A merry messy Kweznuz.
BLACKADDER GOES FORTH
Recorded 20 August–24 September 1989
1) CAPTAIN COOK – TX 28/09/89 BBC1
Captain Edmund Blackadder
ROWAN ATKINSON
Private S. Baldrick
TONY ROBINSON
General Sir Anthony Cecil Hogmanay Melchett
STEPHEN FRY
Lt the Hon. George Colthurst St Barleigh
HUGH LAURIE
Captain Kevin Darling
TIM McINNERNY
2) CORPORAL PUNISHMENT – TX 05/10/89
Corporal Perkins
JEREMY HARDY
Corporal Jones
STEVEN FROST
Private Fraser
LEE CORNES
Private Robinson
PAUL MARK ELLIOTT
Private Tipplewick
JEREMY GITTINS
3) MAJOR STAR – TX 12/10/89
Driver Parkhurst
GABRIELLE GLAISTER
4) PRIVATE PLANE – TX 19/10/89
Squadron Commander Lord Flashheart
RIK MAYALL
Baron von Richthoven
ADRIAN EDMONDSON
Lieutenant von Gerhardt
HUGO BLICK
5) GENERAL HOSPITAL – TX 26/10/89
Nurse Mary Fletcher-Brown
MIRANDA RICHARDSON
Brigadier Smith
BILL WALLIS
6) GOODBYEEE – TX 02/11/89
Field Marshall Haig
GEOFFREY PALMER
SERIES CREDITS
Written by
RICHARD CURTIS & BEN ELTON
Title Music Composed and Arranged by
HOWARD GOODALL
Bandmaster, the Band of the 3rd Battalion the Royal Anglian Regiment (the Pompadours)
WOI TIM PARKINSON
Production Design
CHRIS HULL
Graphic Designer
GRAHAM McCALLUM
Properties Buyer
JAYNE LIBOTT
Costume Designer
ANNIE HARDINGE
Make-Up Designer
CAROLINE NOBLE
Production Assistant
VANESSA SHARPLES
Production Manager
DUNCAN COOPER
Assistant Floor Manager
J. KENNEDY
Vision Mixer
CAROL ABBOTT
Visual Effects
ROGER TURNER
Technical Coordinator
MIKE CHISLETT
Videotape Editor
CHRIS WADSWORTH
Lighting
HENRY BARBER
Sound
MARTIN DEANE
Director
RICHARD BODEN
Producer
597602 LLOYD, J.
BLACKADDER: THE KING’S BIRTHDAY
Recorded at the Lyceum Theatre, 13 January 1998; TX 14/11/98, ITV
Sir Edmund Blackadder
ROWAN ATKINSON
King Charles I
STEPHEN FRY
Written by
RICHARD CURTIS & BEN ELTON
BLACKADDER BACK AND FORTH
Filmed June–July 1999, debuted 06/12/99, SkyScape Cinema, Millennium Dome; TX 01/10/00, Sky One; Terrestrial TX 21/04/02, BBC1
All Blackadders
ROWAN ATKINSON
All Baldricks
TONY ROBINSON
All Melchetts
STEPHEN FRY
All Georges
HUGH LAURIE
All Darlings
TIM McINNERNY
All Elizabeths
MIRANDA RICHARDSON
Dinosaur
TYRANNOSAURUS REX
Nursie
PATSY BYRNE
William Shakespeare
COLIN FIRTH
Robin Hood
RIK MAYALL
Maid Marian
KATE MOSS
Friar Tuck
CRISPIN HARRIS
Napoleon
SIMON RUSSELL BEALE
Wellington
STEPHEN FRY
Scottish Hordes
HORDES OF SCOTS
Royal Reporter
JENNY BOND
Written by
RICHARD CURTIS & BEN ELTON
Make-up Designer
JAN SEWELL
Costume Designer
HAZEL PETHIG
Production Designer
ANDREW HOWE-DAVIS
Director of Photography
TONY PIERCE-ROBERTS, BSC
Music Composed by
HOWARD GOODALL
Editor
GUY BENSLEY
Executive Producers
PETER BENNETT-JONES, GEOFFREY PERKINS
Director
PAUL WEILAND
Producer
SOPHIE CLARKE-JERVOISE
Produced for the New Millennium Experience Company, in association with Sky TV, with grateful thanks to the BBC. A Tiger Aspect Production.
BLACKADDER: THE ARMY YEARS
Royal Variety Performance recorded at the Dominion Theatre on 5 December 2000; TX 17/12/00, BBC1
Compère/Writer
BEN ELTON
Captain, The Lord Blackadder
ROWAN ATKINSON
THE ROYAL GARDENER
‘Party at the Palace’ trailers TX May–June 2002, BBC1
Sir Osmund Darling-Blackadder
ROWAN ATKINSON
Directed by
JOHN LLOYD
THE JUBILEE GIRL
A clip show reviewing the Summer’s Jubilee events with Sir Osmond Darling-Blackadder and Dame Edna Everage. TX 29/12/02, BBC1
BANK ADDER
‘We are Most Amused’ sketch performed at the Royal Albert Hall on 28 November 2012. Unrecorded. YouTube aside.
Sir (Lord) Edmund Blackadder
ROWAN ATKINSON
Sodoff Baldrick
TONY ROBINSON
First MP
SANJEEV BHASKAR
Second MP
HELEN LEDERER
Madame Chair
MIRANDA HART
Written & directed by
BEN ELTON
Fig. 3 CONCISE GUIDE TO HISTORICAL ANOMALIES
There is no such species as a ‘black adder’, and no black snakes have ever been native to the British Isles.
The Emperor Hadrian never poisoned his mother, nor married his horse, according to existing records.
There were no ‘Jumping Jews’ in England in the fifteenth century, Edward I having expelled the race, who were not legally readmitted until 1653. Remaining Judaists were compelled to keep their faith secret, and were not known for notable skill at jumping.
There was never a holy festival known as ‘Garethstide’, nor ‘Norristide’.
Prince Edmund’s temptation with ‘ten thousand sovereigns’ could not have worked, as sovereigns were not minted until Henry VII’s reign, in 1489.
The title of ‘Duke of Edinburgh’ was not instituted until the union with Scotland in 1707.
The greeting ‘hello’ was not in use until several centuries after the instances given in the Chronicles.
There was only one Pope at any one time during the fifteenth century, never three at once.
There was no Earl of Doncaster, homosexual or otherwise, until the seventeenth century.
Geoffrey Chaucer died almost a century before the events of ‘Witchsmeller Pursuivant’, so his appearance would have been a bad omen, whether moo
ing like a cow or not.
The execution of the Earl of Essex is referred to forty years too early.
Queen Elizabeth’s Nurse suggests that Sir Thomas More was present at the monarch’s birth, but official records show that he was imprisoned before September 1533. Also, he was beheaded, not burned at the stake.
Rhinoceroses do not rut.
Neither Sir Francis Drake nor Lord Effingham were ever under sentence of death – they were victors against the Spanish Armada, and rewarded accordingly.
Queen Mary I was never beheaded – although, as this claim was made by Elizabeth’s Nurse, her every pronouncement can safely be dismissed as insanity.
Elephants are not orange.
There is no record of boomerangs appearing in Britain until after the first recorded discovery of Australia by Captain Cook in the eighteenth century.
The song ‘Happy Birthday to You’ was written at the turn of the twentieth century.
If a horse was ever made Pope, the Vatican did not record it, nor allow anyone in Christendom to know about it.
Sir Thomas Herriott actually introduced the potato to Britain from Colombia in 1586.
Sir Walter Raleigh was not born until two years after the expedition he claims to have embarked on in 1552.
The Cape of Good Hope had already been navigated by 1488, by Portuguese explorer Dias.
Blackadder could not have called the police, two and a half centuries before their creation.
Lord Percy’s suggestion of inviting Cardinal Wolsey to a party is peculiar, given Wolsey’s death thirty years earlier – although Percy perhaps wasn’t to have known that.
Prince Ludwig’s demand for Swedish kronor comes three hundred years before the currency’s invention.
Charles I was captured two years before 1648, the beginning of Sir Edmund’s Chronicle. Oliver Cromwell was also not known as ‘Lord Protector’ until after Charles’s execution. In addition, King Charles never lived to have a fiftieth birthday.
Pitt the Younger’s insistence on war with Napoleon could not have been mentioned in his maiden speech as Prime Minister, as Napoleon did not rise to power until a decade later – the French Revolution preceded Napoleon’s threat.
William Pitt’s younger brother died before he took office. Also, Pitt could not have been bullied at school, as he was tutored at home.
The first edition of Who’s Who was not published until the nineteenth century.
Samuel Johnson completed his dictionary before the birth of George IV, and did not receive his doctorate until ten years after that.
The Earl of Sandwich of bread-based-snack fame was christened John, not Gerald.
Nelson was not made a Lord until 1798.
Wellesley and Nelson only met on one occasion, just prior to the latter’s death at Trafalgar. The former was not made Duke of Wellington until a decade later.
Mark Twain wrote The Prince and the Pauper in 1881.
George III, even in his worst bouts of porphyric insanity, never ended sentences with the word ‘penguin’, preferring instead the expostulation ‘peacock!’
If Captain Blackadder had been in the British Army for fifteen years by 1914, he would have received promotion to Major in 1915.
Captain B imitates the Shipping Forecast, which was not first broadcast until six years after the end of World War I.
There was no such position as Air Chief Marshal for the Royal Flying Corps, it being a subsequent RAF invention.
The US Army entered WWI in April 1917, more than six months before the Russian Revolution.
The University of Hull did not officially exist until 1954, having been founded as a college in 1927. That may, however, have been Captain B’s point.
When Dr Johnson uses the simile ‘as pointless as fitting wheels to a tomato’, he should of course have said ‘as pointless as listing historical inconsistencies in a sitcom’.
‘BLACKADDER IN BETHLEHEM’ (EXTRACT)
ROLLER & VOICE-OVER (WITH CHORAL ACCOMPANIMENT, ANGELS, ETC.)
‘And it came to pass, in those days when a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled. This was the first enrolment, when Quirinius was Governor of Syria. And all went to be enrolled, each to his own city. And this did constitute an enormous business opportunity for Hoteliers all over the land of Judah, not least in the city of David, which is called Bethlehem.’
Cut to the outside of the inn; the sign reads ‘Blackadder Inn: Merry Enrolment Day!’ Caption: 24 December.
SCENE 1. THE FOYER.
It should be quite realistic, not a romanised reception desk. Enter Blackadder. He has long Jewish locks – looks Arabic.
BLACKADDER:
Baldrick! (Enter Baldrick. He looks awful, as usual.) Where the hell is that turkey?
BALDRICK:
What turkey, master?
BLACKADDER:
I told you to buy a turkey for tonight’s special supper. For Jehovah’s sake this is the most important night in the history of this hotel – please our customers tonight and we’ll get them back every year – tonight could be the beginning of something big, something which will change the world.
BALDRICK:
All right, I’ll go out and get it …
SCENE 2. THE KITCHEN
Baldrick is arriving back. He takes a big turkey out of his sack, clears the table, and begins to pluck it. But as he pulls out the first feather …
TURKEY:
What the hell are you doing?
BALDRICK:
Who said that?
TURKEY:
Me.
BALDRICK:
O my God.
TURKEY:
What an incredible way to behave – bring me back here to your house, and then start tearing my bloody feathers out. You little bastard!
BALDRICK:
But I have to do it; you’re the master’s supper.
TURKEY:
(utter outrage) I beg your pardon?
BALDRICK:
You’re the special dinner.
TURKEY:
Wait a second – you mean, not satisfied with tearing my feathers out, you’re actually going to eat me as well?
BALDRICK:
That’s right.
TURKEY:
But I’m a talking turkey – with me, you could buy a hundred ordinary turkeys.
Enter Blackadder slightly flappy.
BLACKADDER:
Baldrick – we need some entertainment for tonight.
BALDRICK:
We’ve already got it, lots of wine and our special feast. Although –
BLACKADDER:
No, come on, come on – entertainments – you know, snake tamers, lion charmers, that kind of thing. Can you think of anyone in that line?
BALDRICK:
Well, my cousin is a very good all-round family entertainer.
BLACKADDER:
(suspicious.) Really?
BALDRICK:
Well, he’s not a bad magician.
BLACKADDER:
Tell the truth, Baldrick. (Hits him.)
BALDRICK:
My cousin’s a crap magician, but he’s got a collection of funny hats. (Blackadder just hits him.) My cousin’s got one funny cap.
BLACKADDER:
Then get him round here at once – and finish plucking that turkey.
BALDRICK:
I can’t.
BLACKADDER:
Why not?
BALDRICK:
Well, I’ll let the turkey answer for itself.
BLACKADDER:
I’m sorry?
BALDRICK:
It’s a talking turkey.
BLACKADDER:
Of course it is. (To the turkey.) Tell me, we’re undecided what vegetables to do with you. What do you think? Peas or parsnips? (Pause.) Sorry – didn’t quite catch that. (Pause.) Mmm – Baldrick – do you remember what the punishment for lying and time wasting is under Roman law?
The True History of the Blackadder: The Unadulterated Tale of the Creation of a Comedy Legend Page 45