The BBC’s quirky-yet-classic 1980s comedy series, Blackadder, might finally have a long-hoped-for fifth season, according to British tabloid reports. However, such rumors have circulated before, and there’s been no official announcement confirming the news just yet.
I have long adored this oddball series and have frequently revisited the episodes via DVD over the years. (It doesn’t take long; there are only six episodes for each of the four seasons, plus a handful of specials.) The show follows its protagonist, one Edmund Blackadder (played to perfection by Rowan Atkinson), through different historical eras in England: the Middle Ages, the Elizabethan era, the Regency era, and World War I.
Blackadder starts out as a bumbling prince (the younger son to King Richard IV) and proceeds to become both smarter and lower-ranking as the seasons progress: a nobleman in Queen Elizabeth I’s court in season two, a butler to Hugh Laurie’s foppish, dimwitted Prince Regent in season three, and a captain on the Western Front in season four. He is a knight in The Cavalier Years special and a shopkeeper in Blackadder’s Christmas Carol, a Dickens parody set in Victorian England.
Blackadder has always straddled that fine line between being slyly silly and wickedly smart, drawing abundantly from British cultural history for its frequently broad humor. Who can forget Edmund’s brief stint as a corrupt Archbishop of Canterbury and that infamous Black Russian codpiece? How about when he was kidnapped by a Spanish torturer who doesn’t speak English and engaged in an elaborate game of charades to communicate? He once accidentally burnt Samuel Johnson’s dictionary, pretended to be the Scarlet Pimpernel, and stood trial as the Flanders Pigeon Murderer. The final episode of season four (“Goodbyeee”) proved uncharacteristically moving.