The True History of the Blackadder (20 page)

‘In many ways
The Black Adder
was the most ambitious of all the series,’ McInnerny says, ‘in that there was at least five minutes of film in every episode, there was no live audience … For that reason I think it should be cherished. Having said that, it was kind of rough and messy, and some things didn’t work. Rowan wasn’t entirely relaxed in the first series – none of us were, because we still weren’t quite sure what we were doing.’ To which Curtis freely puts up his hand: ‘We bit off slightly more than we could chew, is the truth of the matter. And with Rowan’s character we tried to do lots of things – we tried to make him sort of arrogant, scared, feeble, bullying … We tried to do a really rounded thing, and the truth of the matter is that it was too much for a character to hold. I think it was a conglomeration of quite a few funny things that we knew Rowan could do.’ ‘And an amusing costume and a daft haircut an amusing character doth not make,’ adds Atkinson, volunteering that they made Edmund ‘a little too despicable. Heroes of the classically successful British comedy series tend to have won a high degree of sympathy and affection from the British public, like Frank Spencer and even Alf Garnett. Basil Fawlty certainly did. To run a small business and hate your customers is very British.’

But after three decades of self-flagellation, it’s probably time to steady the whip. It’s difficult to appraise the show on its own merits, bearing in mind what was still to spill from the Blackadder Chronicles, but it seems highly unlikely, if
The Black Adder
had remained a stand-alone
series, that it would be remembered as anything less than a lost classic by lovers of British comedy everywhere. The remarkable cast and their unforgettably silly performances would have earned the programme fans all round the world even if nobody involved ever worked together again after 1983, and despite the modest viewing figures both on first broadcast and when repeated in the autumn of 1984, the show did have the distinction of winning an International Emmy for ‘The Archbishop’. Blessed grins, ‘I remember Martin Shardlow rushing over here in a car – I didn’t know he knew where I lived! – with tears in his eyes, saying, “We’ve won an Emmy, Brian, we’ve won an Emmy!” just weeping with happiness.’

The scene in which Baldrick reveals the going rate for the Catholic Church’s pardons, curses and fake holy relics (including Jesus’ own waterproof sandals, knocked up in his carpentry shop) remains a favourite among all the cast, though Curtis admits that such high points tend to give away his background. ‘What used to be strong about British comedy is that people went from writing sketches to writing sitcom, and their sketch craft was carried through – some of the best things in series one are really sketches.’

The team knew that there were lessons to be learned for a second series, but their bridges were burned anyway – mutilated, tickled half to death and finally self-poisoned, King Edmund’s reign was definitely over. ‘That,’ snarled the Hawk in another sequence cut from broadcast, ‘will be the end of the so-called Black Adder!’ But if that really was the case, the show could proudly stand alone, and disgrace nobody. John Lloyd admits today, ‘I do think one of the hallmarks of it is that it seems better than one remembers it. On the odd occasions that I do see it, you think, “God, this is quite good, it’s slightly embarrassing …”’

His featured role was certainly a fillip for Robinson’s career, not only qualifying him for an appearance in
The Young Ones
, appearing alongside Robbie Coltrane as Victorian physician Dr Not the Nine O’Clock News (who cannot tell the difference between his elephant
and the Elephant Man), but also introducing him to a completely different group of Oxford and Cambridge comics, who would welcome him into the team for
Who Dares Wins
. Being Rowan’s sidekick led him to roles in the first series of
Alas Smith & Jones
, produced and directed by Martin Shardlow, with Phil Pope and Jimmy Mulville also supporting the starring double act. ‘With those shows,’ Robinson says, ‘I had a big introduction to the entire comedy mafia of that time. Rather than playing for Dagenham & Redbridge, I was suddenly playing for Manchester United! Since
That Was the Week That Was
, before I left school at sixteen, I’d known that kind of TV was the place I could be happy and make a major contribution, but I thought it would never happen because I didn’t know anybody involved in it, and I’d written countless letters to directors of various comedy shows and nothing ever happened. Then I got this lucky break … Mel and Griff asked me to do some bits and pieces in
Alas
, which was enormous fun to do, and at the time I was as excited by doing that as I was by
Blackadder
– for a start it was much funnier than the first
Blackadder
! And it meant I was around much more for the creative parts – the first
Blackadder
series, by and large, we acted what was written down, but with Mel and Griff it was much more about workshopping comedy. The script editor was Jimmy Mulville, and we got on very well, so he suggested me for the Channel 4 series.’

Originally piloted in 1983 without Robinson,
Who Dares Wins
was another attempt to carry on where
Not
left off, with an Oxbridge bunch reacting to the foibles of 1980s life, spearheaded at first by ex-
Not
scribe Andy Hamilton and Denise O’Donoghue. With head writers Mulville and Rory McGrath joining Oxonians Pope and Julia Hills for the full series – broadcast late on Saturday night on Channel 4 in 1984, specifically aimed at boozy youths thrown out at closing time – Tony’s ‘theatrical university of life’ background made him an interesting performer to complete the quintet, and gave him plenty of scope for showing a little versatility after the less rewarding creation
of the first Baldrick (even if he is mainly remembered as a panda, or for running around naked). ‘I think I learned more from the four series of
Who Dares Wins
than almost anything I’ve ever done. I was surrounded by incredibly talented people at the top of their game who were constantly creating comedy, it really was a comedy factory, and you either sank or swam.’

Although never a mainstream hit in the vein of
Not
,
Who Dares Wins
did boast some of its best writers, including Hamilton, Guy Jenkin and Colin Bostock-Smith, plus Tony Sarchet, all given specific licence to push as many boundaries of taste as they dared. ‘We got away with murder!’ Tony says. ‘And this was the time when Mary Whitehouse was watching every sketch show like a hawk.’

Luckily for Who Dares Wins Productions, latterly Hat Trick (the production company started by McGrath, Mulville and his wife O’Donoghue to make the programme), another sketch show on Sunday nights over on ITV was drawing far more flak from the nation’s moral watchdogs. With the launch of
Spitting Image
, John Lloyd had moved on from Rowan Atkinson’s rubber face to a cast of thousands of them, and in the process he would inspire a whole new chain of collaborations and comic legacies – starting with an early writers’ meeting not long after the broadcast of
The Black Adder
, at which Richard Curtis’s paranoia about his sitcom’s popularity was calmed by his meeting a genuine fan, in the shape of
Young Ones
writer and budding stand-up Ben Elton.

^fn1
At the same time, revealing the duality of Jackson’s career, Rik showed up as a guest on
The Cannon & Ball Show
.

^fn2
McMillan was born in South Lanarkshire in 1950, although thanks to a public-school education at Glenalmond College (‘the Eton of Scotland’), paid for by his doctor father, he was ridiculed for his posh accent when he enrolled at Glasgow Art School in the late sixties. In truth, Robbie despised the public-school system and rebelled at every opportunity, even though he was also a popular figure, playing rugby for the school and becoming head of the debating society. Also, like Rowan Atkinson, at a young age he developed an insatiable passion for the internal combustion engine. His studies in Glasgow centred on painting and film, but before graduation he had already decided that the latter was his true medium, especially in front of the camera, and so began a long decade of working on the fringes of Scottish theatre and comic improvisation in Glasgow nightclubs, having taken his stage name in honour of his jazz hero John Coltrane. It wasn’t until the start of the following decade that Robbie Coltrane moved south and began to pick up bigger comic roles.

^fn3
Plus a sublime forty-minute spin off,
Kevin Turvey: The Man Behind the Green Door
, starring Rik, Ade and Robbie

^fn4
On the list was a first ever writing credit for one ‘Steven Fry’, who had supplied one of many quickies poking fun at the mind-blowing new technology of electric handdryers.

^fn5
John had also sent the internal BBC memo which led to the
H2G2
TV series, and was on standby to produce until
Not
filled up his schedule, though he received an ‘Associate Producer’ credit.

^fn6
As Stevenson’s story was adapted into a rollicking TV drama in the seventies,
The Black Arrow
’s influence on
Blackadder
seems hard to ignore.

^fn7
There was nothing new about a comic playing different members of one vast family tree either – the first star vehicle for
On the Buses
favourite Reg Varney was a children’s comedy series in 1964 called
The Valiant Varneys
, which ran for two series looking at a whole host of the cheeky chap’s historical ancestors, though sadly every episode was deleted and the show is now officially Missing Believed Wiped.

^fn8
A frowning serpent circling a crown, with dragons rampant, a host of vicious weapons and emblems of skulls and torture, adorned with the motto
Veni Vidi Castratavi Illegitimos
(‘I came, I saw, I castrated the bastards’).

^fn9
The part would bag him the odd distinction of having two central but short-lived roles in the pilots of huge eighties sitcoms –
Blackadder
and
Red Dwarf
.

^fn10
Including production assistant Hilary Bevan-Jones, who had started her career on
Not
, and would stick with the
Blackadder
team for the series before becoming a successful producer, working again with Curtis on
The Boat That Rocked
.

^fn11
A hastily rewritten version of
The Death of the Pharaoh
, featuring alternative comedy icon Malcolm Hardee.

^fn12
Costume dramas themselves rarely had such luxury – by the time Atkinson was filming the first series of
Blackadder
, in another studio in Broadcasting House Ron Cook was covering the same period of history by playing Shakespeare’s
Richard III
with nothing but cardboard sets and painted backdrops. He only got a taste of the high-budget life when he resurfaced in the sitcom’s finale as Sean the Irish Bastard.

^fn13
Baldrick’s fear that he would be lucky to get back up to dung-shoveller level was an unintended spot of historical accuracy: medieval dung-shovellers, or gong farmers, earned far more than most labourers.

^fn14
His characterisation owed much to his insane performance as mercenary guerrilla Mad Mike Hoare in the last series of
Not
: ‘The enemy, soldier, are dedicated professionals, armed with 500 machine guns, dozens of tanks, flame-throwers, atomic bombs, Martian ray-guns, giant spiders and large sticks with spiky bits on the end, which they love to shove up your bottom and turn rapidly!’

^fn15
Brian is quick to add that when climbing Mount Ararat with a Turkish party in 2008, his comrades would gleefully quote from the show, especially his line ‘Love your fellow man as yourself – unless he’s Turkish, in which case, KILL THE BASTARD!’

^fn16
It is tempting to see the moment Atkinson lops off Cook’s head as symbolic of a torch being passed.

^fn17
‘Canned laughter’ being largely an invention of dim-witted critics, Hanna-Barbera cartoons aside.

^fn18
Desmond continues to run the company to this day, but his time with Wallace signalled the height of NTOB’s popularity, presenting a very different kind of historical comedy, channelled through the gob-smacking amateurism of Dingle’s writing and direction.

^fn19
Sadly, Nunn died in spring 2012, at the age of forty-nine.

^fn20
They would be reunited a year later for one of John Cleese’s Video Arts training films,
Oh What the Hell?
– but then most of the comedians featured in this book would crop up in a Video Arts film at some point.