The Black Adder
Set in the Middle Ages, the series is written as an alternate history. It opens on 21 August 1485, the eve of the Battle of Bosworth Field, which in the series is won not by Henry Tudor (as in reality) but by Richard III. Richard III, played by Peter Cook, is presented as a good king who doted on his nephews, contrary to the Shakespearean view of him as a hunchbacked, infanticidal monster.
After his victory in the battle, Richard III is unintentionally killed by Lord Edmund Plantagenet; Richard attempts to take Edmund's horse, which he thinks is his own. Not recognizing the king, Edmund thinks Richard is stealing it and cuts his head off. The late King's nephew, Richard, Duke of York (played by Brian Blessed) who is Lord Edmund Plantagenet's father, is then crowned as Richard IV. Lord Edmund himself did not take part in the battle after arriving late, but later claims to have killed 450 peasants and several nobles, one of whom had actually been killed by his brother in the battle.
King Richard IV of England and XII of Scotland and his Queen Gertrude of Flanders have two sons: Harry, Prince of Wales and his younger brother Prince Edmund. Of the two, Harry is by far his father's favourite, the King barely acknowledging his second son's existence. It is a running gag throughout the series that Edmund's father cannot even remember his name. However, despite his mostly dismissive attitude toward his second son, the series' finale makes it clear that the King loves Edmund as much as Harry: on Edmund's deathbed, the King does his best to console him and has the entire court drink a toast in his honour. In the third episode, when Edmund becomes the Archbishop of Canterbury and helps his father to secure some land before the church, the King acknowledges Edmund as his son, embraces him and even mentions to the Queen that he has "turned out well".
Using this premise, the series follows the fictitious reign of Richard IV (1485–98) through the experiences of Prince Edmund, who styles himself as "The Black Adder", and his two sidekicks: the imbecilic Lord Percy Percy, the Duke of Northumberland (Tim McInnerny); and Baldrick (Tony Robinson), a more intelligent servant of no status.
By the end of the series, events converge with accepted history, when King Richard IV and his entire family are poisoned, allowing Henry Tudor to take the throne as King Henry VII. He then rewrites history, presenting Richard III as a monster, and eliminating Richard IV's reign from the history books. In reality, Richard, Duke of York, one of the Princes in the Tower, was only twelve years old (and perhaps two years dead) when the Battle of Bosworth Field took place in 1485, and thus too young to have had two adult sons. One notable anachronism is Edmund´s title, Duke of Edinburgh, as Scotland was an independent kingdom ruled by a different royal house from its inception in the ninth century until 1603 (with the exception of some periods during the turmoil of the Scottish Wars of Independence) though given that this is an alternate history, it is possible that Henry Tudor falsified the history of Scotland as well.
=== Episodes ===
The episodes in this series, written by Rowan Atkinson and Richard Curtis, were originally shown on BBC One on Wednesday evenings, 21:25 – 22:00. Each episode ran for roughly 33 minutes. The series began on 15 June 1983.
Each of the episodes was based on a medieval theme — the Wars of the Roses, the Crusades and Royal succession, the conflict between the Crown and the Church, arranged marriages between monarchies, and the Plague and witchcraft. The final episode follows a planned coup d'état.
The series was broadcast shortly after the BBC Television Shakespeare productions of Shakespeare's four plays about the Wars of the Roses, the three-part Henry VI plays, followed by Richard III, which was first shown on 23 January 1983. Some of the same actors were used to enhance the parody of Shakespearean history. Ron Cook, who played Richard III in the Shakespeare productions, is cast as the villainous "Sean the Irish Bastard". Peter Benson, who played Shakespeare's Henry VI, played Henry VII in the first episode.
=== Character development ===
In this series, the character of the Black Adder is somewhat different from later incarnations, being largely unintelligent, naive, and snivelling. The character does evolve through the series, however, and he begins showing signs of what his descendants will be like by the final episode, where he begins insulting everyone around him and making his own plans. This evolution follows naturally from the character's situation. "The Black Adder" is the title that Edmund adopts during the first episode (after first considering "The Black Vegetable"). Presumably one of his descendants adopted it as a surname before Blackadder II, in which the title character becomes "Edmund Blackadder". Furthermore, Baldrick is shown in more favourable and intelligent light here - his 'cunning plans' are typiclly superior and more workable than Edmund's own. Starting from the second series, the character's relative intelligence and naivety clearly switch.
comedy, satire, alternate history