{"id":870,"date":"2012-10-07T08:50:37","date_gmt":"2012-10-07T07:50:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.blackadderhall.com\/?p=870"},"modified":"2012-10-07T08:50:37","modified_gmt":"2012-10-07T07:50:37","slug":"biblical-blackadder-uncovered-in-new-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blackadderhall.com\/?p=870","title":{"rendered":"Biblical Blackadder Uncovered in NEW Book!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>source: BBC.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n

A draft script for a Christmas episode of Blackadder has come to light during research for a new book<\/a><\/em><\/span> about the BBC’s classic comedy series.<\/p>\n

Blackadder in Bethlehem sees Rowan Atkinson’s character as the owner of the inn where Joseph and Mary seek a bed for the night.<\/p>\n

The story also features Baldrick, the Three Kings – and a talking turkey.<\/p>\n

Written in 1988, the script was given to comedy historian Jem Roberts by writer Richard Curtis.<\/p>\n

Roberts describes it as “completely unofficial Blackadder”.<\/p>\n

Fragments of the unfinished script appear in his book, The History of the Black Adder, which is published later this week.<\/p>\n

In the book, Curtis that he abandoned the idea “for fear it would cause too much offence”.<\/p>\n

Instead, it was the Dickensian-themed Blackadder’s Christmas Carol that went into production, and was broadcast on 23 December 1988.<\/p>\n

Blackadder ran for four series between 1983 and 1989, starring Atkinson as Blackadder and Tony Robinson as his dogsbody Baldrick.<\/p>\n

There were also some stand-alone stories, the last of which was Blackadder: Back and Forth in 1999.<\/p>\n

“When you write a book about a comedy world, there is a dream that you’ll be invited into this Ali Baba’s cave of unbelievable archive material,” Roberts told the BBC. “I always presumed that would never be the case with Blackadder.”<\/p>\n

But Roberts was amazed when he was handed the previously unseen script while interviewing Curtis at his offices in Notting Hill.<\/p>\n

“He printed out a document from his computer and said, ‘see what you want to do with this’.<\/p>\n

“My jaw dropped when I saw I was holding a lost Blackadder script.<\/p>\n

Roberts added: “He wrote on the script that one of the reasons it didn’t get used was because it was a strange cross between Fawlty Towers and Life of Brian.<\/p>\n

“He didn’t think he was going to make it compare to either of them. That’s his reason for it never getting any further than it did.”<\/p>\n

Set on 24 December at the Blackadder Inn in Bethlehem, the opening scene features an exchange in the foyer between Blackadder and Baldrick about getting a turkey for the “most important night in the history of this hotel”.<\/p>\n

In the next scene, Baldrick is in the kitchen with a turkey which starts to remonstrate with him about being plucked and eaten.<\/p>\n

Later, Joseph arrives looking for a room. Blackadder offers him Baldrick’s lodgings.<\/p>\n

BLACKADDER: How about I offer you this young man’s room?<\/p>\n

JOSEPH: That sounds excellent.<\/p>\n

BLACKADDER: Yes. It’s not that excellent – less of a room, more of a manger.<\/p>\n

“It wasn’t a huge script, there were massive amounts missing,” explains Roberts. “It’s the rough workings of a comic genius.”<\/p>\n

The author said he wanted to write the history of Blackadder from the point of view of a “devoted fan”, to mark the 30th anniversary of the first pilot episode of The Black Adder.<\/p>\n

The book was written with the co-operation of writers Richard Curtis and Ben Elton, producer John Lloyd and the cast and crew.<\/p>\n

Roberts’s previous book was The Fully Authorised History of ‘I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue’.<\/p>\n

But what did Roberts think of the talking turkey scene in Curtis’s re-discovered script?<\/p>\n

“In the Blackadder universe there are ghosts and witches, so there could have been talking turkeys – why not?”<\/p>\n

“If they had made Blackadder in Bethlehem, it would have been very off-the-wall.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

source: BBC.co.uk A draft script for a Christmas episode of Blackadder has come to light during research for a new book about the BBC’s classic comedy series. Blackadder in Bethlehem sees Rowan Atkinson’s character as the owner of the inn where Joseph and Mary seek a bed for the night. The story also features Baldrick, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[18,21,23,24,25,32,52,75,89,91,100],"class_list":["post-870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-series","category-specials","tag-bbc","tag-biblical","tag-blackadder","tag-bladrick","tag-book","tag-comedy","tag-jesus","tag-religion","tag-sitcom","tag-special","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackadderhall.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackadderhall.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackadderhall.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackadderhall.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackadderhall.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackadderhall.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackadderhall.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackadderhall.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackadderhall.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}