The True History of the Blackadder (59 page)

Indeed, though history has shown that making any great prophecy about a new
Blackadder
is a mug’s game, there’s never been a better time for his return than the second decade of the third millennium, with Atkinson freely rhapsodising about the idea on the
Johnny English Reborn
press junket, and even Hugh’s punishing schedule on
House
reaching a climax. Laurie himself openly admits that we have not totally lost him to the world of drama and music when he says, ‘The possibilities for Blackadder going further back into the past, or into the future or to other continents … there are always possibilities, because Richard and Ben are immensely talented writers, and they could make an awful lot of different kinds of things work … We’re eternally bound together, you know, by that experience. Every year we meet under the clock at Paddington Station, ten to four, all wearing the tie – we’ve got a tie made, you know, nice.’ ‘We will take the piss out of him non-stop and tell him what an appalling American accent he has,’ Tony laughs, ‘but we are all deeply proud of him.’

Blackadder
’s extended thespian family all agree that they would be proud to receive any call from Lloyd for a new incarnation, and Miriam Margolyes for one says, ‘It was a very, very happy programme to work on; I feel it was an honour to have been even a tiny part of it. It’s something I cherish in my career that I was part of something that still, after twenty-five years, is so fresh, clever, inventive and extremely funny. It’s one of the classic pieces of television comedy, like
Dad’s Army
or
Fawlty Towers
, there are just a few series that are outstanding, and I think that that was one of them.’ Fry concludes, ‘We made some people very happy and had a damned good time (well, some of it was good) making it. I’m terribly pleased to have been involved. Laughter is an astounding gift to be able to give people, especially laughter that isn’t cool, look-at-me, wearing sunglasses and being hip.’

Tony is equally positive about the show, no matter what happens. ‘I am so proud to have been in
Blackadder
. I don’t feel like some actors would – “Oh, I don’t want to mention that character, I’m in fear of being typecast!” I don’t feel like that at all … There are lots of other shows that I’ve done that have taken more time to do, that have taken more toll on me,
^fn22
or where I’ve actually made more money! But the fact that I’ll go to my grave as Baldrick isn’t something I shy away from … I feel like the curator of Museum Baldrick. Every few years a new generation want to bring him out and dust him off. It’s not that he is me, but I feel I have a very warm and close relationship with him.’ With typical self-criticism, the man forever to be seen as Baldrick’s master divulges, ‘I was travelling on a plane several years ago, and an episode came up on the entertainment channel, and it was the Nurse episode from the fourth series, with Miranda. And as far as I’m aware it was an episode that I had never, ever seen … I’m not a great laugher, sadly, but I might have sniggered at it. Which was my way of saying that it was very funny … I think one of the most striking things about it is how it’s lasted, actually. It doesn’t seem to date. I suppose it helps that we set the sitcom in different periods of British History, and therefore it’s not like watching those seventies sitcoms, where people seem to have embarrassingly long sideboards and things, which immediately dates it, and distances you from the comedy. Whereas because we tended to do it in quite a serious way, most of the programmes look as though they could have been made yesterday.’

Everyone agrees that if anyone has the power to bring another Edmund Blackadder back from the dead, it is the writers, and in 2011 Elton did admit that he and Curtis were working together on a new script for the first time since the millennium – and, as Atkinson outlined, doing so in their own time, and not to a commercial brief.
This was not
Blackadder
, however, but a Curtis movie idea with Elton input – Ben nearly collaborated on
The Boat That Rocked
, but schedules clashed.

Nevertheless, the show’s thirtieth anniversary does make a resurgence for the country’s most jingoistic comedy character seem more pertinent than it has been in years. Whether buoyed by the 2012 Olympics and Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee or not, for the majority of the British public, monarchist or republican,
Blackadder
, with its searing sarcasm, poetic wit, ironic jingoism and cheering regular doses of lavatorial filth, remains a genuinely unifying national touchstone. The texts constructed by Curtis & Elton and ‘plumpened’ by everyone else are already in many ways as embedded in the British consciousness as Shakespeare – or at least, for years now, amateur dramatic companies have performed episodes with comparable regularity – with all proceeds usually going to Comic Relief.

It would be glib to portray the four protectors of the
Blackadder
name as the victorious elder statesmen of British comedy – Rowan, the King in exile, keeping his next comic gambit shrouded in secrecy, Richard the venerable Archbishop of Love and Charity, Ben the international impresario and Pope John Lloyd, commander of curiosity. But unlike many of their contemporaries none of them has lost the hunger to amuse which propelled them to their lofty positions, and none of their successes, particularly with regard to
Blackadder
, were achieved without collecting scars, both professionally and emotionally. Where the surviving Pythons are happy to laughingly rake each other through the dirt until they die, the
Blackadder
team in many ways have a deeper affection for each other, and thus a greater fragility when rancour has arisen in the past, no matter how much water has gone under the bridge. Theirs was an explosive chemistry which has been carefully kept separate for many years, and yet, as witnessed at first hand, the depth of personal affection between each of the creators of
Blackadder
, and the strength of the protective code which still binds them three decades on,
is tangible. The combustible collaborative spirit which united them in the 1980s has been sacrificed for the benefit of their close friendships, so perhaps for that reason alone
Blackadder
is a blueprint best left in a locked drawer.

The last lines of
Blackadder
dialogue written prior to the original publication of this True History was a short scrap of Tudor apocrypha written by Curtis for a charity auction in 2006, where famous writers had to offer something on the theme of ‘Between the Lines’:

Whether any new collaboration from Ben and Richard sees the light of day or not, Curtis says, ‘My general feeling about
Blackadder
is that I feel
massively
lucky about how it turned out. While we were doing it, I remember saying to Ben, “It’s good, but it’ll never be great.” And so it’s a surprise, these years later, that it lasted so well. To be honest, I write films most of the time now, and I believe in television more. When you write something of which there are a lot of episodes, they can be a bigger part of people’s lives. I think sitcoms have a way of being a part of the texture of the life that you lead.
Python
isn’t a sitcom, but
Python
and
Fawlty Towers
were that for me. And it’s a fantastic thought, a big achievement, if
Blackadder
is that for other people … The charms about
Blackadder
are, one, it’s quite lovely to look at because it’s so lusciously designed and dressed, and, two, it’s very dense, there are more words in it than one would expect and sometimes those give me pleasure. I have to say that it was exceptionally hard work, so if it turned out well, that would be why.’ Elton, traditionally jaded about his past work, and eager to promote his next, has admitted, ‘I’ve recently watched
Blackadder
again for the first time in nearly twenty years and I’ve taken enormous joy in the fact that my kids love it. That’s something I never thought about when it was happening, that twenty years later I’d be watching it with my children … I’m flattered about how fond people are of
Blackadder
. I’m not running it down here.
Blackadder
is not finished. We’ll never give up on it. It could be a middle-aged show. We’ll never officially close it down. Ever.’

This True History, therefore, can have no ending. While the cream of the eighties generation who bonded together to make
Blackadder
are still around, there will always be the promise of more. And for long after they
aren’t
, the Blackadder legacy will prove as immortal as the Adder himself, still making Britons as yet unborn laugh, and look at the existing history of the nation in a completely different way. ‘Maybe what we are doing is providing the background buzz of inaccurate history. It’s quite interesting that history education has moved in a
Blackadder
direction. It’s trying to take the juiciness, violence, stupidity and oddness of old eras and look at it through a young kid’s eyes,’ Curtis concludes. ‘It does make you slightly wonder whether we didn’t take our responsibilities seriously, and whether we could have actually said some more interesting things about history all the way through. Perhaps we should go back and do the series in a more responsible manner next time.’

^fn1
Plus, for Canada, there was a quick job providing links on a
Just For Laughs
Montreal special as a Mountie called Casey Rogers, scripted by Lise Mayer and Jon Canter.

^fn2
The first link between the two comic universes came in the cartoon, where Bean’s antics in Buckingham Palace in the episode ‘A Royal Flush’ featured subtle portraits of Lord Blackadder and the Prince Regent adorning the walls.

^fn3
Besides the casting of Hugh Grant as Curtis’s on-screen avatar for the first time – and the dress worn to the film’s premiere by his then girlfriend Liz Hurley.

^fn4
The role would eventually be taken over by Helen Atkinson-Wood, with Elton remaining as director.

^fn5
Who was given the role of Verges in
Much Ado About Nothing
with the single instruction, ‘Don’t act.’

^fn6
Stephen even had a letter and signed photograph from the great man.

^fn7
Laurie’s subsequent claim that they had ‘filleted the oeuvre’ of Wodehouse’s books was not quite the case – besides a few short stories, the entire last novel
Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen
remained untouched.

^fn8
Ten years later, Mayall was to claim in his near-memoir
Bigger Than Hitler, Better Than Christ
that he was upset at the time due to Fry fleeing abroad, pregnant with his child.

^fn9
Both colleagues have long hinted that some form of comic collaboration could be on the cards, and they were confirmed as providing voices for a new adaptation of
The Canterville Ghost
in 2014.

^fn10
This idea was adopted by the BBC for Jon Plowman’s
The Nearly Complete and Utter History of Everything
, an epic special aired in the first days of the new millennium, and featuring a truly incredible roll-call of comedy stars appearing in epochal scenarios, including Brian Blessed’s debut as a very loud Henry VIII and Stephen and Hugh joining Patrick Barlow, James Dreyfus and Robert Bathurst for an investigation into how the crowned heads of Europe divided the Continent with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648.