Blackadder
Cast & Key People
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Our Review
The granddaddy of British parody, and still the funniest thing Rowan Atkinson has ever done. Across four seasons, Blackadder reinvents itself each time: a snivelling medieval prince, a courtly dandy surrounded by gits, a butler in Georgian Bath, and finally Captain Edmund Blackadder, trying to survive the First World War with nothing but sarcasm and a survival plan.
The constant is the greatest insult comic partnership in TV history. Atkinson’s withering contempt meets Tony Robinson’s Baldrick, whose “I have a cunning plan” is the load bearing wall of the whole enterprise. Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Miranda Richardson, and Brian Blessed cycle through, each era giving them a fresh costume to be terrible in.
Season two is the公认 peak, but the final episode of season four is the greatest half hour British comedy ever produced, and the last scene still lands like a punch thirty years on. Our score: 10/10. If you have never seen it, clear your week.
