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A video compilation of Blackadder using 'national stereotypes' to create jokes and insults.

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Blackadder's best insults by nationality!

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6) 'How the real Blackadder and Darling survived the WWI trenches'

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6) 'How the real Blackadder and Darling survived the WWI trenches'

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An article from The Express 1999, discussing how Blackadder went 'over the top' in their portrayal of Darling and Blackadder surviving the trenches in WWI.

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This is your gateway to over TWO million pages of the 20th Century's biggest-selling newspapers, from 1900 to today, all as published on the day they were published and all searchable by name, word or phrase.

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A web fan page for fans of Blackadder, with regular updates, character's quotes, best moments, and pictures. Also including interviews with cast and crew.

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Welcome to The Blackadder Wiki! This wiki is all about the British TV Sitcom Blackadder, which anyone can edit! We are currently editing over 410 articles! The Blackadder Wiki is here to honour Blackadder which was written by Richard Curtis, Rowan Atkinson and Ben Elton.

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Michael Gove (education secretary) argues Blackadder's 'left-wing' myths belittle Britain and clear Germany of blame in WWI.

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Michael Gove blasts 'Blackadder myths' about the First World War spread by television sit-coms and left-wing academics

Education Secretary says war is represented as a 'misbegotten shambles'

But he claims that it was in fact a 'just war' to combat German aggression

Left-wing myths about the First World War peddled by Blackadder belittle Britain and clear Germany of blame, Michael Gove says today.

The Education Secretary criticises historians and TV programmes that denigrate patriotism and courage by depicting the war as a 'misbegotten shambles'.

As Britain prepares to commemorate the centenary of the outbreak of the war, Mr Gove claims only undergraduate cynics would say the soldiers were foolish to fight.

In an article for the Daily Mail, Mr Gove says he has little time for the view of the Department for Culture and the Foreign Office that the commemorations should not lay fault at Germany's door.

The Education Secretary says the conflict was a 'just war' to combat aggression by a German elite bent on domination.

'The First World War may have been a uniquely horrific war, but it was also plainly a just war,' he says. 'The ruthless social Darwinism of the German elites, the pitiless approach they took to occupation, their aggressively expansionist war aims and their scorn for the international order all made resistance more than justified.'

Britain has pledged £50million in public money to mark the event, with school trips to battlefields and ceremonies planned over four years. The French government has also embraced the centenary, planning 1,500 events across the country. But there are few plans for events in Germany itself.

Mr Gove, who has rewritten the school history curriculum to give pupils a better grasp of the broad sweep of British history, reserves his greatest scorn for those who have sought to depict the soldiers as lions led by donkeys.

He says: 'The war was, of course, an unspeakable tragedy, which robbed this nation of our bravest and best.

'But it's important that we don't succumb to some of the myths which have grown up about the conflict in the last 70 or so years.

'The conflict has, for many, been seen through the fictional prism of dramas such as Oh! What a Lovely War, The Monocled Mutineer and Blackadder as a misbegotten shambles - a series of catastrophic mistakes perpetrated by an out-of-touch elite.'

Mr Gove turns his fire on 'Left-wing academics all too happy to feed those myths by attacking Britain's role in the conflict'.

He singles out Richard Evans, regius professor of history at Cambridge University, who has said those who enlisted in 1914 were wrong to think they were fighting to defend freedom.

Mr Gove writes: 'Richard Evans may hold a professorship, but these arguments, like the interpretations of Oh! What a Lovely War and Blackadder, are more reflective of the attitude of an undergraduate cynic playing to the gallery in a Cambridge Footlights revue rather than a sober academic contributing to a proper historical debate.'

The Education Secretary says it is time to listen to historians such as Margaret Macmillan who has 'demonstrated how those who fought were not dupes but conscious believers in king and country, committed to defending the western liberal order'.

He also cites the work of Professor Gary Sheffield, who has reassessed the damaged reputation of British commander Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig.

Blackadder Goes Forth cast Rowan Atkinson in the title role as a captain in the trenches of Flanders during 1917.

It focused largely on his cowardly attempts to avoid certain death through going 'over the top' to engage the enemy.

Under the misguided leadership of a general played by Stephen Fry, and with little help from the hapless Private Baldrick (Tony Robinson) plus a twittish ex-public schoolboy played by Hugh Laurie, it chronicles his increasingly gutless efforts to dodge the action or escape the trenches.

The series was written by Four Weddings and Bridget Jones creator Richard Curtis in partnership with Left-wing comic Ben Elton.

It is still shown in schools to help children learn about the war.

Why does the Left insist on belittling true British heroes?

By MICHAEL GOVE, Education Secretary

The past has never had a better future. Because history is enjoying a renaissance in Britain. After years in which the study of history was declining in our schools, the numbers of young people showing an appetite for learning about the past, and a curiosity about our nation's story, is growing once more.

As a Government, we've done everything we can to support this restoration. We've changed how schools are judged, and our new measure of academic success for schools and pupils, the English baccalaureate, rewards those who study history at GCSE.

And the changes we've made to the history curriculum have been welcomed by top academics as a way to give all children a proper rounded understanding of our country's past and its place in the world.

That understanding has never been needed more. Because the challenges we face today - great power rivalry, migrant populations on the move, rapid social upheaval, growing global economic interdependence, massive technological change and fragile confidence in political elites - are all challenges our forebears faced.

Indeed, these particular forces were especially powerful one hundred years ago - on the eve of the First World War. Which is why it is so important that we commemorate, and learn from, that conflict in the right way in the next four years.

The Government wants to give young people from every community the chance to learn about the heroism, and sacrifice, of our great-grandparents, which is why we are organising visits to the battlefields of the Western Front.

The war was, of course, an unspeakable tragedy, which robbed this nation of our bravest and best. But even as we recall that loss and commemorate the bravery of those who fought, it's important that we don't succumb to some of the myths which have grown up about the conflict.

Our understanding of the war has been overlaid by misunderstandings, and misrepresentations which reflect an, at best, ambiguous attitude to this country and, at worst, an unhappy compulsion on the part of some to denigrate virtues such as patriotism, honour and courage.

The conflict has, for many, been seen through the fictional prism of dramas such as Oh! What a Lovely War, The Monocled Mutineer and Blackadder, as a misbegotten shambles - a series of catastrophic mistakes perpetrated by an out-of-touch elite. Even to this day there are Left-wing academics all too happy to feed those myths.

Professor Sir Richard Evans, the Cambridge historian and Guardian writer, has criticised those who fought, arguing, 'the men who enlisted in 1914 may have thought they were fighting for civilisation, for a better world, a war to end all wars, a war to defend freedom: they were wrong'.

And he has attacked the very idea of honouring their sacrifice as an exercise in 'narrow tub-thumping jingoism'. These arguments are more reflective of the attitude of an undergraduate cynic playing to the gallery in a Cambridge Footlights revue rather than a sober academic contributing to a proper historical debate.

The First World War may have been a uniquely horrific war, but it was also plainly a just war. Nigel Biggar, regius professor of moral and pastoral theology at the University of Oxford, laid out the ethical case for our involvement in a superb essay in September's Standpoint magazine.

The ruthless social Darwinism of the German elites, the pitiless approach they took to occupation, their aggressively expansionist war aims and their scorn for the international order all made resistance more than justified.

And the war was also seen by participants as a noble cause. Historians have skilfully demonstrated how those who fought were not dupes but conscious believers in king and country, committed to defending the western liberal order.
Other historians have gone even further in challenging some prevailing myths.

Generals who were excoriated for their bloody folly have now, after proper study, been re-assessed.

Douglas Haig, held up as a crude butcher, has been seen in a new light thanks to Professor Gary Sheffield, of Wolverhampton University, who depicts him as a patriotic leader grappling honestly with the new complexities of industrial warfare.

Even the battle of the Somme, once considered the epitome of military futility, has now been analysed in depth by the military historian William Philpott and recast as a precursor of allied victory.

There is, of course, no unchallenged consensus. That is why it matters that we encourage an open debate on the war and its significance.

But it is important to recognise that many of the new analyses emerging challenge existing Left-wing versions of the past designed to belittle Britain and its leaders.

Instead, they help us to understand that, for all our mistakes as a nation, Britain's role in the world has also been marked by nobility and courage.

Indeed, the more we reflect on every aspect of the war, the more cause there is for us to appreciate what we owe to our forebears and their traditions.

But whatever each of us takes from these acts of remembrance and hours of debate it is always worth remembering that the freedom to draw our own conclusions about this conflict is a direct consequence of the bravery of men and women who fought for, and believed in, Britain's special tradition of liberty.

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Michael Gove blasts 'Blackadder myths' about the First World War

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Education Secretary says war is represented as a 'misbegotten shambles' But he claims that it was in fact a 'just war' to combat German aggression Left-wing myths about the First World War peddled by Blackadder belittle Britain and clear Germany of blame, Michael Gove says today.

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A BBC poll where Brits would vote on their favourite sitcom of all time in 2004, where Blackadder came 2nd behind Only Fools and Horses.

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A 2004 series organised by The BBC. First there was a public online vote involving 100 British sitcoms, then the top 10 finalists each had a one-hour episode dedicated to them, hosted by a celebrity fan (often found as extras on DVDs of the ...

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BBC News Magazine analyses Blackadder's historical accuracy.

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As fans of Blackadder celebrate the 30th anniversary of the comedy's first broadcast, its stars Tony Robinson and Rowan Atkinson are recognised in the Queen's Birthday Honours. Its fast-and-loose attitude to real events and characters is part of the appeal, but how close is any of it to real history?

Think of the Prince Regent, later George IV, and what images flood your mind?

For anyone who has seen Blackadder it's hard not to think of a bewigged Hugh Laurie shouting "tally ho".

A World War I general? Does Stephen Fry's General Melchett lamenting the death of Speckled Jim come to mind?

The four series of Blackadder are replete with history.

"History was my big subject at school," says producer John Lloyd.

"[Writer] Richard [Curtis] and I had curiously read the same book called Looking at History by RJ Unstead. It said things like: 'In the middle ages women wore wimples'."

Ben Elton [writer from the second series on], being the nephew of eminent Tudor expert GR Elton, also brought a hefty dose of historical enthusiasm.

The pilot episode, never broadcast, was very different to the Blackadder people know today.

"It had a feeling of Game of Thrones, set in an indeterminate period of history, not rooted in real events," says Lloyd.

Blackadder - the series

The Black Adder (1983) - set in the late 15th Century, Edmund, unloved second son of Richard IV, plots feebly to become king

Blackadder II (1986) - Tudor courtier Edmund, Lord Blackadder tries to win the capricious favour of Elizabeth I

Blackadder The Third (1987) - It's the 1700s, and Blackadder is insolent butler to the future George IV (or "Prince Fathead" as he calls him)

Blackadder Goes Forth (1989) - Captain Blackadder (pictured) is serving in the trenches in WWI and trying his best to avoid being killed

"I said we have got to tell people where this is set."

Thus The Black Adder was set in 1485. In this world, Richard III is succeeded by (the fictional) Richard IV, who is later written out of history by (the real) Henry VII.

But the later series come closer and closer to reality. Blackadder II revolves around a childish and intensely capricious Elizabeth I (Miranda Richardson). Blackadder The Third tackles the Regency period with a hapless Prince George.

Blackadder Goes Forth is set mainly in a WWI trench. "In Blackadder Goes Forth they had no option," says Jem Roberts, author of The True History of the Blackadder.

"They had run out of licence to be completely anarchic. There was so little they could get away with in 1989. Lots of people who had fought in the trenches were still alive."

The end result of the four series can be viewed as a kind of satire of school history books and the weird mishmash of fact and exaggeration that is left in many people's heads a couple of decades after their last history lesson.

The costumes were always accurately researched, says Lloyd, and while the dialogue had to be anachronistic to be funny, there were occasional bouts of fact-checking.

A line from the first series was to be: "I curse you, and hope that something slightly unpleasant happens to you, like a potato falling on your head."

As Walter Raleigh was yet to deliver the potato to England this was changed in the final draft to "onion", says Lloyd.

And it's pleasing that more than two decades after the last series finished, it's still used to enthuse children about history, he says.

Here are three bits of history from the series put under the microscope:

The Prince Regent
Blackadder portrayal: Drunken, philandering idiot of spectacularly limited grace and intelligence. Reality: Unfaithful and a drinker, but a noted patron of the arts with no reputation for stupidity.
The Prince Regent of Blackadder the Third has only three life priorities - sleeping in, carousing and seeking out the company of as many ladies as possible.

His limited intellect is spelt out by Blackadder in the following exchange:

When the Prince Regent became George IV he was known to dress up as a butler when guests came to his house, echoing Blackadder
Jem Roberts

Prince George: Someone said I had the wit and intellect of a donkey.

Blackadder: Oh, an absurd suggestion sir, unless it was a particularly stupid donkey.

The Regent that Blackadder has to deal with can be relied on to do the foolish thing - whether it be ennobling Baldrick or confusing a play with real life.

The real prince - who acted as regent for his mentally ill father, George III, and was later crowned George IV - certainly was a philanderer, both before and after his unhappy marriage to Caroline of Brunswick.

"He had a miserable childhood without love," says Tom Ambrose, author of Prinny and His Pals.

"His philandering was usually with very portly ladies - mother figures. He was looking for love and security."

George's appetite for drink and tendency to spend money was also well known at the time.

More from the Magazine

George III is well known in children's history books for being the "mad king who lost America".

More recently, historians have put his "madness" down to the disorder called porphyria. However, new research suggests that George III actually was mentally ill.
Was George III a manic depressive? (April 2013)
The day after his funeral, in July 1830, the Times was happy to label him an "inveterate voluptuary".

It said: "Nothing more remains to be said or done about George IV but to pay - as pay we must - for his profusion; and to turn his bad example to some account, by tying up the hands of those who come after him, in what concerns the public money."

But whatever his spendthrift bent, he was no idiot, says Lord Baker, a fan of Blackadder and author of George IV: A Life in Caricature.

"When it comes to the Prince Regent he was presented as a dandified oaf - usually drunk and stupid. That's pretty unfair to poor old George IV."

Instead, we might recognise his patronage of architect John Nash, his role in the reshaping of London and his major contribution to the royal collection of art.

"He was the greatest town planner - everything from Regents Park to the Nash terraces, Oxford Circus, Piccadilly Circus, the Mall. He totally remodelled Windsor Castle," says Lord Baker.

"He was a tremendous patron of the arts. He was also fat and a dandy and drank a lot."

And at least one episode in Blackadder the Third is absolutely true to reality, says Jem Roberts.

"When the Prince Regent became George IV he was known to dress up as a butler when guests came to his house, echoing Blackadder."

Field Marshal Douglas Haig and WWI generals
Blackadder portrayal: Haig is callous, and fictional General Melchett is an unthinking upper class buffoon. Reality: Years of vigorous academic debate, but revisionist view of Haig now taken by many.
In Blackadder Goes Forth, the eponymous infantry captain sums up his field marshal's strategic masterplan with the line:

"Haig is about to make yet another gargantuan effort to move his drinks cabinet six inches closer to Berlin."

In the final episode, on the phone to Blackadder, Haig is seen casually knocking over model soldiers on a mock-up battlefield and sweeping them up with a brush and pan.

We've been sitting here since Christmas 1914, during which time millions of men have died, and we've advanced no further than an asthmatic ant with some heavy shopping
Blackadder Goes Forth

The visual allusion to his callousness is obvious.

It's in the tradition of Alan Clark's book The Donkeys, which follows on from critics like strategist and military historian Basil Liddell Hart and former Prime Minister David Lloyd George.

In his diary, Hart wrote that Haig was "a man of supreme egoism and utter lack of scruple - who, to his overweening ambition, sacrificed hundreds of thousands of men".

Haig's tactics were characterised by critics as reliant on massive bombardment and frontal assaults with little care for the casualties that resulted, such as on the first day of the Battle of the Somme.

But there has been a wave of revisionist history about Haig in recent years.

"The real Field Marshal Haig was certainly not a callous man," says Gary Sheffield, author of The Chief: Douglas Haig and the British Army.

"He was commanding the largest British army ever. Whatever he did you ended up with lots and lots of casualties.

"In the end he was a successful general. His record was no worse than most other commanders and rather better than many of them."

The other general in Blackadder Goes Forth is even more cartoonish. Known for his catchphrase "Baaaaaah!", Gen Melchett with his exaggerated public school ethos and pitiful intelligence represents another side of the post-WWI criticism.

"As far as the portrayal of Haig, Geoffrey Palmer plays Haig, but in effect Melchett is an amalgam of Haig and John French and the other generals so Haig appears twice," says Sheffield.

But Haig and his fellow WWI generals were operating in a period unique in military history, he argues. Armies had grown so big that generals could no longer cover their whole extent in person, while the radio technology that made manipulating large armies in WWII possible was yet to be invented.

Haig and the other generals learned lessons which led to the sweeping victories of 1918.

Sheffield is still a fan of Blackadder and, having given lectures alongside John Lloyd, enjoys using it as a starting point when tackling preconceptions about Haig and the other generals.

"It is a very good and clever satire not just of WWI but also the popular perception of WWI.

"The problem is that it misses out 1918. The very final scene is set in 1917. It doesn't deal with the victory."

Of course, the debate over Haig is still very much live and there will be plenty who dispute the revisionist view vehemently.

But he certainly wasn't a Melchett-esque dolt.

"Whatever else he might have been he clearly wasn't stupid," says Sheffield. "Haig must not be judged solely on his role as a battlefield commander. He reorganised the Army and trained the Army. To get a true picture we need to see him in the round."

Richard III
Blackadder portrayal: Jovial and pleasant, as played by Peter Cook. Reality: Recent excavation led to renewed interest in Richard's reputation and how it was besmirched by the Tudors. Still not cleared of murder of Princes in the Tower.
"At the very, very start of the entire Blackadder saga, Peter Cook plays Richard III as a jolly king, loving his nephews," says Roberts, who believes the often less well-regarded first series is still a classic.

When people think of Richard III, the portrayal from Shakespeare of a hunchbacked Machiavellian persists. Everyone knows that the Princes in the Tower were killed by Richard III.

But, as anyone from the Richard III Society might ask, what is the concrete evidence against him?

The historical revising of his reign has been going on for much of the 20th Century and reached its zenith in the recent tussle for the right to bury his body. Many more people are now familiar with the Tudor attempt to blacken Richard's name.

"Who knew in 2013, Henry VII would be seen as a liar and a propagandist?" says Roberts.

And there is something fundamentally comic about the fact that Richard's body had to be excavated from a car park in Leicester.

"It echoes Blackadder rather brilliantly," notes Lloyd.
You can follow the Magazine on Twitter and on Facebook

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As fans of Blackadder celebrate the 30th anniversary of the comedy's first broadcast, its stars Tony Robinson and Rowan Atkinson are recognised in the Queen's Birthday Honours. Its fast-and-loose attitude to real events and characters is part of the appeal, but how close is any of it to real history?

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2) Article on Blackadders effect on television comedy

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2) Article on Blackadders effect on television comedy

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An article reviewing how Blackadder changed the history of television comedy.

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Richard Curtis never expected it to turn out like this - that an idea of toying with the comedy and sheer idiocy of pivotal moments in British history would end up a whole generation later as a hefty, multi-volume resource for teachers.

Blackadder, the most successful historical television sitcom yet conceived, is more than a quarter of a century old. When the blundering Edmund Blackadder, with his absurd pointy shoes, basin haircut and equestrian ineptitude, made his first appearance in 1983 (inadvertently decapitating Richard III at Bosworth Field), Margaret Thatcher was crushing Michael Foot at the polls in real life.

Between mouthfuls of porridge, Curtis, 52, offers his theory on the lasting appeal of the show, which he co-created with its star, Rowan Atkinson. "It seems to have been a trick of fate that something historical finds it easier to last, because it was out of date when it was made," he says.

Since that first medieval incarnation of Edmund, Atkinson has embodied successive generations of the Blackadder dynasty, from the Elizabethan and Regency periods and then, perhaps most poignantly, as an army officer in the First World War trenches. That series - Blackadder Goes Forth - was made in 1989, since when Curtis (who co-wrote the last three series with Ben Elton), has gone on to become a successful screenwriter and film director. While box-office favourites such as Four Weddings And A Funeral, Notting Hill, Bridget Jones's Diary and Love Actually flowed from Curtis's pen, he was also writing another hit television comedy, The Vicar Of Dibley. As his working relationship with Atkinson, a friend from their days at Oxford University, evolved into another endearingly uncoordinated comic icon, Mr Bean, Blackadder appeared to have been consigned to the TV archives - yet it had not gone away.

When Curtis recently returned to Harrow School, where he was once head boy, he was pleasantly surprised to find that the pupils, without exception, asked him not about his blockbusting cinematic romcoms but about a geek of ages past. "They didn't give a damn about the movies," he says.

It is not only at Harrow either. "I think [Blackadder] is taught in schools, definitely the First World War series is. I think teaching might be a slightly rich interpretation of it; I think it is background atmosphere. I've got a feeling that when they do the Regency or the Elizabethan period, at some point after exams or a particularly hard prep, the DVDs go on," he says. "What is great is that they don't think, 'Oh, here's a hideously old-fashioned thing with people with mullet haircuts'. They think 'here's some comedy I like set hundreds of years ago'."

The enduring appeal of the show is helped by the success its stars subsequently enjoyed. Hugh Laurie is now internationally known as Dr Gregory House, while Stephen Fry is almost a national institution. Curtis admits: "When somebody shoves on a DVD, instead of it being people they don't know, it's people they have come across, so it does feel more germane." In recent years, the occasional live Blackadder sketch has kept alive speculation about a fifth series, and Curtis will not rule this out. In fact, he has a fine idea or, as the bumbling Baldrick (played by Tony Robinson) might put it, a "cunning plan". "It did occur to me the other day that it would have been funny to have done a fifth series set when we actually did the first series - in 1984 - with Blackadder working in No 10 and very annoyed about a series called Blackadder which showed his ancestors had been fools."

But Curtis says his concern would be that, 26 years on, he and the team members might be too self-aware and end up "writing to a formula ... putting in lots of similes and lots of silly names". "I have always said that Blackadder was a young man's show about how stupid people in authority were," adds Curtis. "There might be a time when we are all old men and we want to say how stupid young people are. That moment has not yet quite arrived."

Meanwhile, there is another time-travelling television project on his mind. As a father of four children, he has become a big fan of Dr Who since it was revitalised four years ago by the Welsh writer Russell T Davies. "I have been thinking of writing something my children would enjoy," says Curtis. "The fear of films is that you start a film when a child is 14 to amuse them and, by the time you've finished it, they are 17 and wouldn't dream of watching it. So I thought if I actually want to do something that will make my children happy, why not write for a show they do love and which turns itself around quickly, so I can be absolutely confident that I will be sitting in the living room in a year from now, watching something that they'll like."

He has not yet committed himself to writing for Dr Who, though it's a notion that appeals to him. Having been born in New Zealand and lived in various countries before arriving in Britain at the age of 11, his experiences of children's TV are quite different from his those of his peers. "To be honest, I was not really a Dr Who person in its earliest manifestations," he says. "I never really got Blue Peter or Captain Scarlett or Thunderbirds or Dr Who. In a way those are things you've got to start watching when you are five and they then leak into your bones."

Curtis is enthusiastic about the health of British TV comedy, being a fan of The IT Crowd and Flight Of The Conchords and someone who enjoys watching E4's The Inbetweeners with his children. He does voice concerns about children's history books ("it's a tough search to find a Napoleon or Wellington biography in a child-friendly form") and thinks that, although research was never its strongest suit, perhaps Blackadder can help here. "We wrote the whole second series without ever reading a book, but it's a weird thing the amount of history you know in your bones," he says. "After we'd written Blackadder II, I gave Ben a Ladybird book of Elizabethan history for Christmas and it turned out we'd covered 12 of the 13 chapters. Somewhere in your bones, you know there was exploring, beheading, religious corruption, the invention of the cigarette and so on."

He regrets that "kids don't watch old historical movies on wet Sunday afternoons" any more, but maybe Blackadder (which he thinks took its name from a "dodgy" Tony Curtis film called The Black Shield Of Falworth) can fill that void too. "Maybe what we are doing is providing the background buzz of inaccurate historical fiction," he muses.

While there might be a shortage of biographies aimed at young readers, Terry Deary's Horrible Histories series has been a publishing phenomenon, Curtis points out. "It's quite interesting that history education has moved in a Blackadder direction," he says. "It is trying to take the juiciness, violence, stupidity and oddness of old eras to look at it through a young kid's eyes."

Blackadder Remastered: The Ultimate Edition, a deluxe box set of all four series with special features, is out on DVD today.

Reuse content

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How Blackadder changed the history of television comedy

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Richard Curtis never expected it to turn out like this - that an idea of toying with the comedy and sheer idiocy of pivotal moments in British history would end up a whole generation later as a hefty, multi-volume resource for teachers.

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A great overview of all four series of Blackadder, providing relevant context of the social time in Britain reflected in Blackadder.

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Much-loved historical sitcom starring Rowan Atkinson