Blackadder s00e06 Episode Script
Behind the Scenes
A&E goes behind the scenes with Rowan Atkinson, star of the critically acclaimed series The Black Adder on A&E's Britwit.
Rowan Atkinson is a household name in England, a celebrated star of television and the theatre.
The New York Times has called him "A gifted mime and an expert in debunking pretension.
".
Rowan received an international Emmy for his role in The Black Adder, and the series has twice swept the ace awards as best comedy series on cable television.
One element that has earned the series this distinction, is that it changes with each season.
The first series is set in the middle ages.
Atkinson plays Edmund, duke of Edinburgh, the bungling nephew of the fictitious king Richard III.
Blackadder 2 jumps ahead to Elizabethan times, to the comic misadventures of Blackadder's great-great grandson, lord Edmund Blackadder.
Blackadder the third features E.
Blackadder esquire, descendant of both Blackadders, who suffered the loss of his family's fortune, and now serves as the assertive butler to be idiotic prince regent.
When A&E met up with Rowan, he explained the premise behind basing the series in medieval times, and the motivation for changing the series with each season.
Also Rowan reflected on the success of his brand of British humour with American audiences.
Well there is said to be a great gulf between American and British comedy, which I suppose there is, but there is one level certainly on which American and British comedy seem to meet rather well, and that is basically in the kind of youthful market, you know, college level of humour, which tends to be kind of youngish sort of humour and rudish sort of humour.
And of course The Black Adder is kind of young orientated, and, occasionally, quite rude, and I think that is a level on which, on which Americans can accept comedy very easily.
They do say mrs.
M.
, that verbal insults hurt more than physical pain.
They are of course wrong, as you will soon discover when I stick this toasting fork in your head.
At the same time there is something about The Black Adder, certainly from series 2 onwards, whereby the hero is quite a cool character.
And most English comics, or comic heroes are not cool at all, though, though, their kind of, you know, gimpy middle class suburban put upon husbands and putting upon wives, tend to be fairly middle-aged, fairly uncool characters.
Whereas Americans I think like their comedians to be quite cool, I mean theolcove, y'know, Eddie Murphy and Dan Akroyd and Steve Martin and and all these kind of guys they've, that, they're cool, you know, they're in charge, and I mean, they are in, they get in sticky situations but they get out of them in a fairly cool way, and The Black Adder of course is a pretty cool hard and cynical character and I think maybe that is another level on which it-it operates successfully for an American audience.
You look smart, mr.
Blackadder.
Going somewhere nice? - No, I'm off to the theatre.
- Don't you like it, then? No, I don't! A lot of stupid actors strutting around shouting, with their chests thrust out so far, you'd think their nipples were attached to a pair of charging elephants! And the worst thing about it is having to go with prince Mini-Brain! - Doesn't he like it, either? - He loves it.
The problem is that he doesn't realise it's made up.
Last year, when Brutus was about to kill Julius Caesar, the prince yelled out, "Look behind you, mr.
Caesar!" I can't see the point in the theatre.
All that sex and violence - I get enough of that at home.
Except for the sex, of course.
And while we're out, Baldrick, I want you to give this palace a good clean.
It's so dirty, it'd be unacceptable to a dung-beetle that had lost interest in its career and really let itself go.
Come on, Blackadder, or we'll miss the first act! Coming, sir, as fast as I can! Stick the kettle on, Baldrick.
It was risky, I suppose, trying to base a comedy series in medieval times, in-in any kind of period setting.
Because most sitcoms are set in, you know, modern-day households.
But the inspiration f-for doing it was just that, was that we felt as though, you know, when we started to think about doing a sitcom of our own, after doing sketch shows on TV for years, that we felt as though we didn't want to be compared to any contemporary, or current situation comedy.
And one sure way of not being compared to John Cleese or Fawlty Towers was to go back 400 years and set it then.
Of course actually all your characters and you situations and your jokes are very identifiable to a modern day audience otherwise it wouldn't be funny.
So to a certain extent, y'know, it's, it's a cheat really, it's the same jokes in different clothes.
Occasionally you can make jokes about cutting people's heads off, which you generally can't in this day and age.
There.
That will teach you.
I didn't think the character in the first series was very well rounded, he was bit of a mess, I mean he looked quite funny, y'know, he had a strange kind of aspect to him, which was very amusing and he spoke in quite a funny way, but he wasn't what I would call a well-written, a particularly well-written for or particularly few well-rounded character.
And when Richard Curtis and Ben Elton started to think about the second series that they thought that a major change of gear would probably be a good idea and they just came up with this guy who was, y'know, who was really rather cool and competent.
And it is quite rare really to home in, as I say in British terms, on a comic character who has a kind of a certain p-p-panache to his life.
And, and that seemed to work quite well.
Of course having set the precedent for changing the character every series we're kind of stuck with it now, and it would seem extremely dull if we made 2 series on the trot in the same period or with the same character, Of course increasingly the character is staying actually very similar.
His clothes change and he has a beard or he doesn't have a beard, but generally he's staying pretty cool and calm and cynical, and and it's the Baldrick character, his sidekick, who who gets p-put upon, and he's the silly gimp.
Why have you got a piece of cheese tied to the end of your nose? To catch mice, my lord.
I lie on the floor with my mouth open and hope they scurry in.
- And do they? - Not yet, my lord.
I'm not surprised.
Your breath comes straight from satan's bottom Baldrick.
The only sort of mouse you're going to catch is one without a nose.
That's a pity, 'cause the nose is the best bit on a mouse.
Get the door, Baldrick, get the door.
Well my lord, If things go as planned tonight, congratulations are in order.
Nice try, Percy.
But forget it, you're not getting a penny.
Baldrick, I would advise you to make the explanation you were about to give phenomenally good.
- You said: "Get the door.
" - Not good enough, you're fired.
But, my lord, I've been in your family since 1532! So has syphilis.
Now get out! A present-day blackadder is probably what our producer John Lloyd is most keen to exploit, which is some kind of, you know, media hack who drives around in in an Aston Martin, and has his mechanic, who would probably be a mr.
Baldrick in the greasy overalls who would service his motor cars.
And he would undoubtedly be something and somewhere around the royal family.
Probably some minor aristocrat.
And then you can get all the contemporary problems of being a member of the royal family in the present day and age, and what an anachronism it is, and the press, and television, and uh you know, the archbishop of Canterbury, and all the characters that you can have from the present day.
And I think it would be an interesting series to do, but I think it'd be quite different from virtually anything else that we've done in the Black Adder so we'd have to change gear, we'd not only have to change our clothing, our clothing gear, but I think that we'd have to change a lot of the basic jokes that are inherent in the series.
Sir, I fear you have been too long a soldier.
We no longer treat servants that way in London society.
- Why, I hardly touched the man! - I think you hit him very hard.
Nonsense! That would have been a hard hit.
I just hit him like that.
No, sir, a soft hit would be like this.
Whereas you hit him like this.
The future of the Black Adder is unclear, because it's extremely difficult to get our writers to actually sit down and actually do anything.
And they only make a series about every two years.
So in between times I have to go off and do other things.
But we are hoping to do this to Dickensian series of a Black Adder, which w'd Blackadder 4, Blackadder 5, I suppose, will logically be in a in the twentieth century.
And we are already projecting actually, we've already We're doing a christmas special soon of the Black Adder, in which we do momentarily look into the future of the Black Adder, and we see Frondo, Frondo Blackadder, who, who'se dressed like some kind of ice warrior, with lots of muscles and long glowing black singlets of hair, who has basically killed everyone else off in the universe, and is having a very good time in 3,000 AD.
I think there is a major future for the Black Adder, the only question is you know getting the writers to write things.
But at least changing the character and changing the situation and the period every series, it does inspire us, it does inspire the writers and inspire myself to carry on.
Rowan Atkinson can be seen in The Black Adder on A&E's Britwit.
Britwit is a collection of the best of British comedy, featuring the outrageous Rising Damp, the truly tasteless French & Saunders, and the award-winning Yes Prime Minister.
A&E's Britwit, Tuesday and Thursday nights at 11:30 Eastern, 8:30 Pacific.
Hello.
I'm Rowan Atkinson.
Watch my show, "The Black Adder", on A&E's Britwit, for a half hour of grubby comedy.
Or I'll cut your head off or something.
Whose was this?
Rowan Atkinson is a household name in England, a celebrated star of television and the theatre.
The New York Times has called him "A gifted mime and an expert in debunking pretension.
".
Rowan received an international Emmy for his role in The Black Adder, and the series has twice swept the ace awards as best comedy series on cable television.
One element that has earned the series this distinction, is that it changes with each season.
The first series is set in the middle ages.
Atkinson plays Edmund, duke of Edinburgh, the bungling nephew of the fictitious king Richard III.
Blackadder 2 jumps ahead to Elizabethan times, to the comic misadventures of Blackadder's great-great grandson, lord Edmund Blackadder.
Blackadder the third features E.
Blackadder esquire, descendant of both Blackadders, who suffered the loss of his family's fortune, and now serves as the assertive butler to be idiotic prince regent.
When A&E met up with Rowan, he explained the premise behind basing the series in medieval times, and the motivation for changing the series with each season.
Also Rowan reflected on the success of his brand of British humour with American audiences.
Well there is said to be a great gulf between American and British comedy, which I suppose there is, but there is one level certainly on which American and British comedy seem to meet rather well, and that is basically in the kind of youthful market, you know, college level of humour, which tends to be kind of youngish sort of humour and rudish sort of humour.
And of course The Black Adder is kind of young orientated, and, occasionally, quite rude, and I think that is a level on which, on which Americans can accept comedy very easily.
They do say mrs.
M.
, that verbal insults hurt more than physical pain.
They are of course wrong, as you will soon discover when I stick this toasting fork in your head.
At the same time there is something about The Black Adder, certainly from series 2 onwards, whereby the hero is quite a cool character.
And most English comics, or comic heroes are not cool at all, though, though, their kind of, you know, gimpy middle class suburban put upon husbands and putting upon wives, tend to be fairly middle-aged, fairly uncool characters.
Whereas Americans I think like their comedians to be quite cool, I mean theolcove, y'know, Eddie Murphy and Dan Akroyd and Steve Martin and and all these kind of guys they've, that, they're cool, you know, they're in charge, and I mean, they are in, they get in sticky situations but they get out of them in a fairly cool way, and The Black Adder of course is a pretty cool hard and cynical character and I think maybe that is another level on which it-it operates successfully for an American audience.
You look smart, mr.
Blackadder.
Going somewhere nice? - No, I'm off to the theatre.
- Don't you like it, then? No, I don't! A lot of stupid actors strutting around shouting, with their chests thrust out so far, you'd think their nipples were attached to a pair of charging elephants! And the worst thing about it is having to go with prince Mini-Brain! - Doesn't he like it, either? - He loves it.
The problem is that he doesn't realise it's made up.
Last year, when Brutus was about to kill Julius Caesar, the prince yelled out, "Look behind you, mr.
Caesar!" I can't see the point in the theatre.
All that sex and violence - I get enough of that at home.
Except for the sex, of course.
And while we're out, Baldrick, I want you to give this palace a good clean.
It's so dirty, it'd be unacceptable to a dung-beetle that had lost interest in its career and really let itself go.
Come on, Blackadder, or we'll miss the first act! Coming, sir, as fast as I can! Stick the kettle on, Baldrick.
It was risky, I suppose, trying to base a comedy series in medieval times, in-in any kind of period setting.
Because most sitcoms are set in, you know, modern-day households.
But the inspiration f-for doing it was just that, was that we felt as though, you know, when we started to think about doing a sitcom of our own, after doing sketch shows on TV for years, that we felt as though we didn't want to be compared to any contemporary, or current situation comedy.
And one sure way of not being compared to John Cleese or Fawlty Towers was to go back 400 years and set it then.
Of course actually all your characters and you situations and your jokes are very identifiable to a modern day audience otherwise it wouldn't be funny.
So to a certain extent, y'know, it's, it's a cheat really, it's the same jokes in different clothes.
Occasionally you can make jokes about cutting people's heads off, which you generally can't in this day and age.
There.
That will teach you.
I didn't think the character in the first series was very well rounded, he was bit of a mess, I mean he looked quite funny, y'know, he had a strange kind of aspect to him, which was very amusing and he spoke in quite a funny way, but he wasn't what I would call a well-written, a particularly well-written for or particularly few well-rounded character.
And when Richard Curtis and Ben Elton started to think about the second series that they thought that a major change of gear would probably be a good idea and they just came up with this guy who was, y'know, who was really rather cool and competent.
And it is quite rare really to home in, as I say in British terms, on a comic character who has a kind of a certain p-p-panache to his life.
And, and that seemed to work quite well.
Of course having set the precedent for changing the character every series we're kind of stuck with it now, and it would seem extremely dull if we made 2 series on the trot in the same period or with the same character, Of course increasingly the character is staying actually very similar.
His clothes change and he has a beard or he doesn't have a beard, but generally he's staying pretty cool and calm and cynical, and and it's the Baldrick character, his sidekick, who who gets p-put upon, and he's the silly gimp.
Why have you got a piece of cheese tied to the end of your nose? To catch mice, my lord.
I lie on the floor with my mouth open and hope they scurry in.
- And do they? - Not yet, my lord.
I'm not surprised.
Your breath comes straight from satan's bottom Baldrick.
The only sort of mouse you're going to catch is one without a nose.
That's a pity, 'cause the nose is the best bit on a mouse.
Get the door, Baldrick, get the door.
Well my lord, If things go as planned tonight, congratulations are in order.
Nice try, Percy.
But forget it, you're not getting a penny.
Baldrick, I would advise you to make the explanation you were about to give phenomenally good.
- You said: "Get the door.
" - Not good enough, you're fired.
But, my lord, I've been in your family since 1532! So has syphilis.
Now get out! A present-day blackadder is probably what our producer John Lloyd is most keen to exploit, which is some kind of, you know, media hack who drives around in in an Aston Martin, and has his mechanic, who would probably be a mr.
Baldrick in the greasy overalls who would service his motor cars.
And he would undoubtedly be something and somewhere around the royal family.
Probably some minor aristocrat.
And then you can get all the contemporary problems of being a member of the royal family in the present day and age, and what an anachronism it is, and the press, and television, and uh you know, the archbishop of Canterbury, and all the characters that you can have from the present day.
And I think it would be an interesting series to do, but I think it'd be quite different from virtually anything else that we've done in the Black Adder so we'd have to change gear, we'd not only have to change our clothing, our clothing gear, but I think that we'd have to change a lot of the basic jokes that are inherent in the series.
Sir, I fear you have been too long a soldier.
We no longer treat servants that way in London society.
- Why, I hardly touched the man! - I think you hit him very hard.
Nonsense! That would have been a hard hit.
I just hit him like that.
No, sir, a soft hit would be like this.
Whereas you hit him like this.
The future of the Black Adder is unclear, because it's extremely difficult to get our writers to actually sit down and actually do anything.
And they only make a series about every two years.
So in between times I have to go off and do other things.
But we are hoping to do this to Dickensian series of a Black Adder, which w'd Blackadder 4, Blackadder 5, I suppose, will logically be in a in the twentieth century.
And we are already projecting actually, we've already We're doing a christmas special soon of the Black Adder, in which we do momentarily look into the future of the Black Adder, and we see Frondo, Frondo Blackadder, who, who'se dressed like some kind of ice warrior, with lots of muscles and long glowing black singlets of hair, who has basically killed everyone else off in the universe, and is having a very good time in 3,000 AD.
I think there is a major future for the Black Adder, the only question is you know getting the writers to write things.
But at least changing the character and changing the situation and the period every series, it does inspire us, it does inspire the writers and inspire myself to carry on.
Rowan Atkinson can be seen in The Black Adder on A&E's Britwit.
Britwit is a collection of the best of British comedy, featuring the outrageous Rising Damp, the truly tasteless French & Saunders, and the award-winning Yes Prime Minister.
A&E's Britwit, Tuesday and Thursday nights at 11:30 Eastern, 8:30 Pacific.
Hello.
I'm Rowan Atkinson.
Watch my show, "The Black Adder", on A&E's Britwit, for a half hour of grubby comedy.
Or I'll cut your head off or something.
Whose was this?