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Blackadder
1983 · TV series · 32 min episodes · 4 seasons
Created by Richard Curtis, Rowan Atkinson, Ben Elton
Blackadder traces the deeply cynical and self-serving lineage of various Edmund Blackadders throughout British history, from the muck of the Middle Ages to the frontline of The Great War.
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39 comments on Hacker News
> at least covers all of the English language.
Why am I reminded of the Blackadder episode, "Ink and Incapability"?
I think this is an important point - it's very easy to find oneself slipping into the protagonists' viewpoints, in a lot of media the protagonist is 'good', we see the story unfold from their viewpoint, then sympathise and empathise with them, even when they make mistakes, their motivations were pure, and what’s unfolding isn’t due to problems with them exactly.
But in shows like this, in quite a lot of sitcoms with more cringey aspects, the protagonist is not necessarily a good person and they are often undone by their own pettiness, selfishness etc. Certainly in UK comedy anyway. Look at Fawlty Towers, The Office... Blackadder to a certain extent.
So when the article says this -
> It’s natural when experiencing any story to identify and sympathize with the protagonist.
Yes and no - this is something that creators can play with and may make deliberately jarring. See 'Lolita' for an extreme example. The article even brings up Walter White, saying - "we are drawn to root for the primary subject of the story". If you're still rooting for Walter by the end of Breaking Bad... were we watching the same show?
I would pay a lot for a tool that removes the freaking laugh track from videos.
I just physically can't watch them. I wanted to watch the Blackadder series, but I couldn't even get through one episode.
Interesting titbit in the last paragraph: apparently in the Wolf Hall series based on Hillary Mantel's trilogy, the codpieces in the show weren't as big as they ought to have been given historical evidence.
That, at least, Blackadder got right:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5A55eWbiBI
Maybe a tad more modest (season 2 might have gotten it exactly right, although the codpiece seems to have been getting less popular by then during the reign of Elizabeth I).
For what it's worth, I liked Blackadder season one, it's a different character but it's still great, and in some ways I find it much more original, if less funny.
Baldrick is a character in the British comic-history TV series Blackadder. If you don't know about Blackadder, then I'm not going to tell you anything more, except that you're lucky to have them all to watch for the first time.
Back in the 2010s there was a TED Talker/grifter who advocated a wider stance to project power and confidence. For a time that notion must have been picked up by political consultants, leading in the UK to the so-called Tory Power Stance:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/apr/30/sajid-javid-tory-power-stance
Of course, connoisseurs of the historical documentary series “Blackadder” know that this has a tradition going back to Regency times.
Seinfeld was the first good sitcom.
That's such a silly thing to say I'll assume it's intentionally provocative and not intended to be truthful rather than representing genuine ignorance.
But for anybody young enough/daft enough to take it seriously, check out
Fawlty Towers
Young Ones
Blackadder
Yes Minister
Dad's Army
Etc
Etc
That's just a quick UK list off the top of my head, I'll leave others to correct the parent comment with US (Bilko?, Cheers?, etc) and other national (Let The Blood Run Free?) suggestions...
You can only ever be as good as that which you read. Read only blog post and you will sound like a blogger. Read only classics and you will sound like a scholar. If you read enough you will become your own best critic. Stop trying to write better and spend that time reading the best material you can find.
The same is true for all aspects of language. If you want to speak better, don't watch TV news or LA sitcoms. Watch classic British comedy (Blackadder) or BBC science docs (Brian Cox) that will expand your practical vocabulary and sense of proper diction.
I loved his cameo as Dr. Johnson in BlackAdder season 3: Ink and Incapability. RIP.
I remember in an episode of Blackadder, in response to "for god's sake we're British aren't we?" from Prince George, he says "You're not you're German". (Obv a TV show isn't the best way to backup facts).
I do like science fiction, particularly of the Star Trek style. I'm less into the Aliens (action/horror) stuff and more into fantasy/exploration stuff. Adventure in general is nice. Conflict is expected (as that's part of any plot), but I don't enjoy shows of inevitable doom usually (although Melancholia was good).
I also like comedy - British, American, southern American. I'm rewatching My Name Is Earl now. I enjoyed Trailer Park Boys for a while. Blackadder was fantastic.
I don't mind some violence, but that shouldn't be the focus. Likewise I don't mind sex (explicit or not) as long as that isn't the point of the show.
Gratuitous, over-the-top violence (modern Tarantino films) are very much not my interest.
I second this recommendation. I've had Blackadder on my library for a long time but never got into it. Then a week ago I saw a reddit post of Blackadder teaching Baldrick how to count with beans[1] and found it damn hilarious. Turns out it is from season 2 and ever since I checked out that episode, I've become a fan of the show to the point coming to like season 1 as well. Rightfully binging now.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4IQjUpTNVU
I never liked Mr Bean, but I _love_ Blackadder (starting from season 2). Every season plays in a different time period. In the first season I feel the comedy is not yet really fleshed out.
Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry also play roles in Blackadder.
Some of my favorite episodes:
- Captain Cook: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5t4g20
- Ink & Incapability: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x82h2qr
- Dish & Dishonesty: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7zr7d7
- Potato: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x60cdus
That doesn't ring true to me at all. I'm more inclined to agree with Stephen Fry [1], who explains that it's ultimately a matter of optimism versus pessimism.
The great American comics are people like John Belushi, the wisecracking charmer who gets the girl in the end, while the British comedian prefers to play the failure; British comedy comes from strife and tragedy and embarrassment and loss of dignity, which is why most British comedy focuses on lower/middle class people and their relationship with the hierarchy: Basil Fawlty (John Cleese's character in Fawlty Towers), Blackadder, David Brent (The Office), and so on.
The types of comedic personalities you tend to see in American culture are the likes of Jim Carrey and Adam Sandler, featuring people who may be average, but generally don't start as failures, and if they do (or if they have an unfortunate fall from grace in the middle of the story), the central theme isn't the inevitability of their failure, but an optimistic path towards self-betterment and reclaiming control over their own destiny.
The US also doesn't have the kind of history of tensions between the classes that Britain has (even though wealth inequality is objectively worse, and the system is simply not recognized as being a class system among ordinary people). The American style of comedy goes hand in hand with the idea of the American dream, that anyone can succeed if they try hard enough.
The most "British" American comedy I've seen in recent times was Forgetting Sarah Marshall (written by Jason Segel, an American, but directed by a Brit, Nicholas Stoller), which basically revels in the haplessness and constant failures of the main character, and his path to happiness isn't the traditional American one (though it has that "pull yourself by the bootstraps" approach).
I recommend watching the clip. Fry delivers a very eloquent thesis. If you're not familiar with Fry, his answer might sound rehearsed, but it's clearly not; he's just extremely articulate.
[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8k2AbqTBxao
I find Blackadder to be one of the greatest achievements in the history of television.
I’m still moved by just how wonderfully subversive it is. There was no need for that show to have anything close to the quality of writing it had over it’s run, especially when you watch the first couple of episodes. It could easily have run for years as a simple, meandering medieval sitcom that went nowhere. I’m so glad it ultimately went to so many places, across so many time periods, without it being an excuse for reusing the same old stories.
I am a long time fan of Rowan Atkinson - though I must say, not of his 'visual comedy' characters like Mr. Bean or Man vs Bee etc. I lean more towards his 'Blackadder' characters (specifically Blackadder 2, 3 and 4. Series 1 was more a 'visual comedy' lead character than the latter, which relied more on a dour character with a sharp verbal wit).
Blackadder 4 in particular added in a darkness to the humour that was really compelling - that last scene in the last episode (when they charge out of the trenches into no mans land) was absolutely haunting and moving. As were the final lines given by the secondary characters (especially Capt. Darling)
EDIT: For those who want to see what I am talking about, here is the final scene (4 minute footage), though I'd highly recommend watching the whole series to really understand the interplay between the characters (especially the pathos of Cpt. Darling vs Cpt. Blackadder) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgyB6lwE8E0
See Blackadder Season 3 for an explanation of why "cromulent" is now a punchline: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOSYiT2iG08
> "> "cold is gods way of telling us we need to burn more protestants"."
This is a reference to the classic british TV series blackadder. Go enlighten yourself
I am reminded of one of my favourite sitcoms - Blackadder
(shortly after burning Dr Johnson's only manuscript of the Dictionary, and realising it will take ten years to re-create):
"No, I love the dictionary, and would like to have my manservant Baldrick read it. Unfortunately it will take him about ten years to learn to read, so please leave it here."
If I were a highschool English teacher I would point the kids at more recent British works. I'd point them at Blackadder or Upstart Crow. Understanding that language, getting all the jokes, requires a degree of english comprehension that is probably slightly higher than the average highschool student. If I wanted to improve their spoken word while teaching them science, I'd assign them every single Attenborough or Brian Cox documentary.
I really wanted to like Upstart Crow, hoping it would be something like Blackadder given the Mitcbell & Webb treatment. But I had to switch it off about 10 minutes into the first episode. The canned laughter was just so annoying, I couldn't stand it Any longer.
Selected Excerpts:
"PCI-to-PCI transfers are not marshalled by the OS o PCI-to-PCI between the NIC and the GPU"
[...]
"a PCI card has DMA over the whole RAM o we can play in memory and the OS shall never know"
[...]
References
"Broadcom firmware development kit: http://www.broadcom.com/products/communications_processors_downloads.php [Not currently online, use Wayback Machine or Google keyword search]
Papers by John Heasman (ACPI, BIOS and PCI rootkits): http://www.nextgenss.com/research/papers/ [Not currently online, use Wayback Machine or Google keyword search]
Implementing_And_Detecting_A_PCI_Rootkit.pdf Network Interface Firmware Back Door with Tigon2, eEye Industry Newsletter, 25th April 2007, http://www.eeye.com/html/resources/newsletters/vice/VI20070425.html [Not currently online, use Wayback Machine or Google keyword search]
A. Singh, Mac OS X Internals, Addison-Wesley, 2006, http://osxbook.com/book/bonus/chapter4/efiprogramming/
Rowan Atkinson, “Blackadder”, BBC TV series."
Author's Twitter: https://twitter.com/cynicalsecurity
(My thoughts: Future Hardware/OS Designers should seriously think about these and related issues...)
Um hand counting in primary elections - you think the Blackadder episode where they try to get Baldric elected to a rotten borough is a good idea.
>This is a huge red flag signal to me. A VP of content should be focused on the quality of shows and the editorial philosophy of a platform.
Some of the greatest TV shows and movies were made on very tight budgets. If your show is big budget, but not prestige drama groomed for the emmys then it has to have good audience asap.
For me this is a good thing - it will push showrunners to be creative. After all the whole blackadder second season is literally 3 rooms and 4 suits budget wise - and it blows off season 1 out of the water which was with a bigger budget.
If you want to learn to speak english well, watch those programs that use English properly. Blackadder. Archer. Sherlock. Even some of the marvel movies (GOTG) are very careful in how they pronounce and articulate words. Then watch every Brian Cox and Attenborough documentary. You might come out with a bit of a British accent but that is far far better than any youtube-derived accent. Better you sound like Stirling Archer than [insert random youtube person].
It also became much less cost effective after the franchise was extended - when UK Constituencies had a small number of voters it was more practicable - see the Blackadder episode "Dish and Dishonesty"
One thing that bugs me is that (guesstimate) 1/3 of Hollywood stars are Australian (or Kiwi), but they always (have to) do US accents in their movies. And about 90% of the time there's actually an Australian character in a US movie/series they get a US actor to play the Australian! And it sounds so very fake, though not to people in the US evidently. Both of these I find hard to watch.
It's no better with Brits. I never could watch House after loving Blackadder, and The Walking Dead is so weird after being a huge fan of This Life. (i.e. the lead character in both are English)
This i like. Reminds me of the Blackadder politics/voting episode where despite there being 1 voter there is 16,472 votes.
Some result where 10 times the voters all vote for one candidate.
> go back to before photographs became a thing in 1839 or so
My favorite taste of this is the Blackadder episode Money. Blackadder ends up blackmailing a bishop with a portrait of the man in a compromising position, and everyone simply assumes that if there's a portrait of an event, it must be real.
It's a great bit of comedy just by pushing a plausible event into the past, and it looks like we're headed to that same scenario in the future. The loss of faith in photographs isn't going to be some unprecedented collapse of truth, it's going to be a return to the default position of politics and society after a mere century of novelty.
The Blackadder episode in question is renowned for being seen as so poignant it was repeated as part of BBCs Armistice Day coverage that year. I can't find viewership numbers but I'd be surprised if the Paul McCartney video in question has been viewed anywhere near as much. If anything many have accused the Blackadder series in question of largely shaping modern perception of WWI
You don't remember it depicting a football game because it didn't - it comes up as one of the characters reminisces about the Christmas truce.
That said the article gives that as just one of a number of examples of how the story has been perpetuated.
A lot of classic British TV shows from the 70s and 80s hold up really well today. After all, Fawlty Towers was a 1975 and 1979 series, with other greats from the era including Dad's Army (1968-1977) and Steptoe and Son (1968-1972). Blackadder and Only Fools and Horses were good in the next decade as well, and that's only counting some of the comedy ones.
As for whether TV now is better or worse... well, probably the same to be honest. Sturgeon's Law reigns supreme where any fiction is concerned, so every generation will have about 90% utterly forgettable crap and 10% amazing classics. The crap just gets filtered out over time as people choose to preserve the stuff that truly matters.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NostalgiaFilter
Either way, there's really not any one era where 'no TV shows' or 'all TV shows' hold up well.
I mean, I've torrented every single DvD I own and the disks sit in the attic. Strangely, not once I have missed the lack of "hilarious cut scenes" or "Directors commentary" features.
Man I love clicking on a folder, scrolling for 30 secs and pressing play and the actual film just starts playing. The only thing that it fails on is remembering where I am in a series. So for eg. Blackadder I'd rather just stick on Netflix thank play in VLC
There are plenty of lazy and derivative British sitcoms, but I wouldn't call The Office a one-off stroke of genius. A great many British sitcoms have similar depth and substance - Gavin and Stacey or The Inbetweeners would be good contemporary examples. Going back further, you have programmes like I'm Alan Partridge, Blackadder, Porridge, The Likely Lads and so on. None of those sitcoms could plausibly have been produced in the US, they're just not sufficiently marketable.
British TV commissioning isn't perfect, but it affords a level of creative freedom that is largely absent in the US, and that is necessary for programmes like The Office to come into being. British commissioners really do think in terms of artistic merit rather than purely commercial value.
American networks are excellent at producing huge international hits, but there's no room in the system for smaller, quirkier productions. The BBC and Channel 4 tend to take a lot of small risks on cheaper productions rather than always swinging for the fences. Success and failure is far less binary when there isn't the pressure to recoup a huge budget. Some of those cheap experiments will be total flops, some will survive as lowbrow primetime filler, some will find a small but loyal audience, a rare few will be huge hits. None of those outcomes are career-ending catastrophes, they're just part of the process. Commissioners expect and allow that level of variance.
I'm a big fan of Rowan Atkinson's TV series Blackadder. It follows the Blackadder family over many generations. "As the generations progress, each Blackadder becomes increasingly clever and perceptive, while the family's social status steadily erodes." Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackadder
I used to work on Wall St., and in my experience wealth and intelligence aren't correlated. Luck is more important. Family's socioeconomic status is important. What school one got one's degree from has something to do with it (but not good grades or what one's degree was in). And, unfortunately, being "ethically challenged" was often the key--scammers and fraudsters have a much easier time making the Big Time.
RE: Tom Perkins... In any economic downturn, there will be scapegoats. The poor scapegoat the rich. The rich scapegoat the poor. Social conservatives scapegoat foreigners, non-Christians, women, gays, non-whites...anyone not like themselves. It's not simply that nobody likes to take personal responsibility or that it's easier to blame the other guy...
In the West we associate self-criticism with depression and anxiety, and we seek to suppress it. Source: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB124511712673817527
Worse, self-criticism is associated with Maoist Communism. Source: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/09/28/china-self-criticism-mao/2883605/
However, there's certainly a tradition of self-criticism in the West, rooted in its canonical texts: "Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?" http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+7:3-5&version=RSV
My point is that we need to be a little more self-critical and a little less quick to scapegoat others for our problems. A little self-criticism might go a long way to making us both smarter and wealthier!
Interestingly, I was introduced to Hugh Laurie by way of Blackadder.
When I wan in high school our local public television satiation (WILL) would run episodes of several 1970s and 80s british sitcoms. Among them were Blackadder, Are you being Served? and Fawlty Towers.
I have to know: What do those Americans who only know him as House think when they see his earlier stuff? Is it a bit of a mind blow?
While people are recommending stuff, yes watch J & W, and Fry and Laurie's comedy shows, both are brilliant, but do not miss Blackadder. (Well, skip season 1 until and if you become a hard core fan as even us UK fans find that one a bit hard going.) Worth watching S2,3,4 as not only are these two in it, but you're going to see Rowan Atkinson (Mr Bean and Jonny English) at his arguably best, and many other brilliant UK comic actors. (Actually, IIRC, S3 and S4 are the ones that bring him to the fore. In fact Im not sure he was in S2 at all. Cant remember.... Im old!!!!) Blackadder S4 is truly an awesome comedy series. Its worth watching fully and properly just to see how they ended it. Do not skip the series for the ending, you will ruin its power. Let it build up, then tear you to pieces.
Personally speaking is cracked me up when House first started and the US treated him like a proper normal actor, while we in the UK knew his comic roles. But, brilliant for Hugh as he could almost start a new career as a serious proper actor with out the "baggage" of comedy. You guys, if you haven't already, now have the sheer delight of checking out his back catalogue.
I was going to add some YouTube links, but as I was going through the site looking for some gems, I realised I would end up adding so many links I would look like an automated spammer. So, you know, hit YouTube, search, and loss a few (un)productive hours laughing :)
Oh and thank you America for giving him a chance to be a proper actor. I don't think it would have happened in the UK. Type-casting and all that.
Why of course, you're right. In, for example, The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive, where Stephen Fry discusses his personal experiences with bipolar disorder and interviews other sufferers, he is obviously just lazily rehashing his General Melchett character from Blackadder. That, presumably, is the reason the documentary won an Emmy.
I agree that Fry fanboyism is rampant sometimes, but you can't deny that he has done worthwhile things.
FWIW I find IT Crowd funny, but it's not on my 'must have' list. - Office, Green wing, Alan Partridge, blackadder, brasseye, day today, extras, league of gentlemen, psychoville, police squad, 30 rock, etc would all be above it.
IT Crowd is great, but I wish it was a bit more cutting/daring rather than settling into a formulaic sitcom.