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After the first season of The Black Adder, the BBC cancelled the show. But that was not the end, and the faster, sexier, funnier - cheaper! - Black-Adder II became one of the BBC's most popular sitcoms. Andrew Pixley braves the spindly killer fish to investigate.
In 1999, writer Richard Curtis recalled the events of some 16 years earlier in the saga of The Black Adder. "The BBC cancelled it after the first series. We weren't allowed to do the second series as it was outstandingly unsuccessful and not funny enough." The turning point for the sequence of savage historical comedies came through a chance meeting between Richard Curtis, who co-wrote the first season with the show's star Rowan Atkinson, and Ben Elton. Elton was from the next generation of comedy writers following on from the Curtis/Atkinson breed of Not The Nine O'clock News. His first major TV success had been as one of the writing team on the alternative and anarchic BBC2 sitcom The Young Ones, since when he had written and performed on Granada's Alfresco with Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie, and was working on a BBC1 comedy serial called Happy Families.
Recalling this vital encounter in 1998, Curtis said: "I just happened to meet Ben one day and he said we should have done it with a studio audience, and from that we decided that not only would he help write it... but that it would be done in front of a studio audience." In 1999, Elton also recounted the pair's assessment of why The Black Adder (see TV Zone #160) had maybe not done as well as hoped: "Doing it on film in this glorious sort of vastness was probably a mistake. Rowan falling off a horse at 200 metres is not really any funnier than anyone else falling off a horse at 200 metres -get the camera in close and he'll make you laugh." Atkinson had been somewhat unsettled by the audience and critical reaction to The Black Adder, and he also now realized that he was finding the writing process to be far more tortuous than Curtis, his old partner. As such, it was decided that while Atkinson would continue to star, Elton would replace him on the writing chores.
By 1984, John Lloyd, the freelance producer who had overseen The Black Adder, was taking over as producer on a successful new topical comedy show - Central TV's Spitting Image. Despite the show's reception, Lloyd was sure that there was still more mileage in the Black Adder format and arranged for a new season to be scheduled in production at the BBC. The difference was that this time there would not be a cast of millions (even if most were extras), there would be minimal location filming, and the spontaneity of a traditional sitcom with performers reacting to the pace and mood of an audience would be captured by doing it before members of the public rather than as the previous piecemeal pre-recordings. As Elton remarked in 2003, "It needed to be a sitcom - not a mini comic movie." Lloyd very much liked the dynamic work of Elton's which he had seen on The Young Ones, and commissioned the two writers for another run of six shows.
The Black Adder was given a second screening over the summer of 1984 - to remind viewers that the series did still exist - and preliminary plans were made for the new episodes. However, one immediate problem was the availability of the actors. Atkinson was now engrossed in theatre work, starring in The Nerd which was due to come to London in October 1984. This was not necessarily a problem because, once the play was established, he could perform the play in the evenings and rehearse the new Black Adder during the day and record it before an audience on Sundays. However, it now seemed that one of the key cast members from the first season, Brian Blessed who had played King Richard, was now tied up filming HTV's John Silver's Return to Treasure Island and out of the country for some time.
The team realized that it was probably a mistake to stick to the same characters, and so set about finding a new era which would also allow greater flexibility in casting and cover the potential non-availability of Blessed. Curtis now reconsidered elements of the original pilot episode for The Black Adder to reformat the series. The setting was shifted forward almost a century to the court of Queen Elizabeth - and as such around the same timeframe as the unbroadcast test episode with its unspecified King and Queen. Also, Edmund was to be re-crafted in the mould originally adopted by Atkinson - a less comical figure with more cunning and intelligence. The new Sixteenth century Blackadder would be the clever fellow continually cursing the fact that he was surrounded by idiots, and with a rapier put-down or dose of sarcasm to suit every occasion. This Edmund was to be a descendant of the original (goodness knows how, given the former's lack of success with women), his status being described as the great grandson in the closing lyrics to the first episode in production.
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