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Re-Watchin' Blackadder 2020

Started by Pink Gregory, June 19, 2020, 02:32:56 PM

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famethrowa

Quote from: Gulftastic on June 20, 2020, 06:19:22 AM
Mr Pants

Still funny. Love it.


I have a hard time with Series 1, it just seems at any moment someone is going to meet a horrible and gory fate. Of course at the end, they do meet a horrible and gory fate for real, which doesn't help matters. I had to go take a little walk in the sun after the last episode.

Cold Meat Platter

I think I love 2, 3 and 4 equally in different ways but Percy's 'gloaters' bit in 2 is probably my favorite. 1 still has great scenes but the Blackadder character isn't as compelling.

kalowski

Quote from: Cold Meat Platter on June 20, 2020, 05:25:34 PM
I think I love 2, 3 and 4 equally in different ways but Percy's 'gloaters' bit in 2 is probably my favorite. 1 still has great scenes but the Blackadder character isn't as compelling.
Worth it for Jim Broadbent's Spanish translator.
"Again, please"

Quote from: Dusty Substance on June 20, 2020, 01:52:03 PM

The characters and performances are all wonderful but there was just too many riffs on the same kind of joke - "Baldrick, that is the stupidest plan since....", "I've had the worst night since.....",

I was relieved they didn't do that with Baldrick talking about his 'cunning plan.'  I think they only repeated that phrase once, maybe twice? 

Shoulders?-Stomach!

That is a valid criticism, especially seeing as they had already subverted that template in series 2 and 3 with

"Better a lapdog to a slip of a girl than a.......GIT"

and

"Plague and pestilence stalk the land like...... two great stalking things"

But I also don't care as the template gags include wilful playfulness like "sticky the stick insect got stuck on a sticky bun" and even in series 4 there is a doff of the cap to the audience with "in fact, if you've got a minute" as one template gag goes extra-long.

kalowski

Quote from: Shoulders?-Stomach! on June 20, 2020, 10:14:43 PM
That is a valid criticism, especially seeing as they had already subverted that template in series 2 and 3 with

"Better a lapdog to a slip of a girl than a.......GIT"

and

"Plague and pestilence stalk the land like...... two great stalking things"

But I also don't care as the template gags include wilful playfulness like "sticky the stick insect got stuck on a sticky bun" and even in series 4 there is a doff of the cap to the audience with "in fact, if you've got a minute" as one template gag goes extra-long.
Wasn't there a "You twist and turn like a twisty turny thing"?

Marner and Me

Quote from: Shoulders?-Stomach! on June 20, 2020, 10:14:43 PM
That is a valid criticism, especially seeing as they had already subverted that template in series 2 and 3 with

"Better a lapdog to a slip of a girl than a.......GIT"

and

"Plague and pestilence stalk the land like...... two great stalking things"

But I also don't care as the template gags include wilful playfulness like "sticky the stick insect got stuck on a sticky bun" and even in series 4 there is a doff of the cap to the audience with "in fact, if you've got a minute" as one template gag goes extra-long.
The Large Crisis Hotel.

Gurke and Hare

Quote from: kalowski on June 20, 2020, 05:58:27 PM
Worth it for Jim Broadbent's Spanish translator.
"Again, please"

"Silencio!"

Pink Gregory

On to Blackadder 3.

I like it enough, but again the setting does a lot of the heavy lifting, a lot of monologuing (good monologuing, but a bit of a comedown from the brilliant dialogue of Blackadder 2).

I also appreciate that Prince George is thick but yet somewhat aware of the fact that he's out of his depth, hence his reliance on his servant.

I offer my contrifibularities.

Pink Gregory

Actually, I complained about Blackadder keeping his composure to a higher degree, but the moment where the facade cracks are still pretty great. 

"You...made...*Baldrick* a lord?"

Pink Gregory

Also enjoying doing some Lee Cornes-spotting

daf

#41
Quote from: Pink Gregory on June 21, 2020, 05:41:49 PM
I also appreciate that Prince George is thick but yet somewhat aware of the fact that he's out of his depth, hence his reliance on his servant.

Similar set up occurs in Fry & Laurie's Jeeves & Wooster - stupid master & wise servant.

That relationship would certainly have been in Laurie's (and Elton's) orbit - via the books, and the 60's Ian Carmichael TV version - which features a slightly broader 'silly ass' Bertie (like Prince George) - rather than the one found in the Books (and Laurie's 1990 ITV version).

kalowski

Quote from: Pink Gregory on June 21, 2020, 05:54:07 PM
Also enjoying doing some Lee Cornes-spotting
"Why do I always get the hard one?"

evilcommiedictator

I'm not British, but I'm guessing there was a bigger external reference to Mrs. Miggins' pie shop somewhere in culture? It seems awfully important and directly referenced to me

paruses

I always thought the pie shop was a reference to the Coffee Shops that the Georgians loved it with pies because pies are funnier and just lower class.

Miggins is just a funny name I suppose and to me always sounded slightly like it could be a euphemism. I was only 15 or so at the time though.

Would be interested  if it is a wider reference though, and I'm sat here in an England shirt and three quarter length trousers.

DrGreggles

Quote from: paruses on June 22, 2020, 08:53:00 AM
pies are funnier and just lower class

Fuck the fuck off!

I bloody LOVE pies and I'm a right posh cunt.

paruses

I feel terrible now. I too love pies and know of some posh people.

What I meant was that the pie is used to make the whole thing less elite than a coffee or chocolate house.

dissolute ocelot

Pies were popular in Regency England, but I wondered if it had something to do with Mrs Lovett's pie shop from the Sweeney Todd story (which is maybe early Victorian rather than Georgian but not that far off). Not that Mrs Miggins is serving anything as nutritious as human flesh, but it added to the cultural currency of pie shops, or may have given them the idea.

sutin

I could never really get into Blackadder II. There's too many characters or something. Third and Forth are perfect though.

paruses

I have always thought that there was a Sweeney Todd connection but assumed that was a much later story.

Was Big Pie a Georgian England thing then?

Richard Heald

Quote from: sutin on June 22, 2020, 11:19:01 AM
I could never really get into Blackadder II. There's too many characters or something. Third and Forth are perfect though.

Too many characters is something Elton took to extremes with Upstart Crow, in which there are an insane number of regular characters that need to be given something to say/do every episode.

paruses

I must have been 16 when I watched Blackadder Goes Forth and it was pretty much all we talked about the next morning at school. I think at the time I was  a bit tired of the extended metaphors and a re-watch shows that for me it hasn't really held up in terms of how funny I find it.

III and the Second  do it a lot more for me and lines from those are still a go-to for certain situations much to the absolute delight of those around me: "RAAAAAAAAAR!!!!!!! .... Unaccustomed As I Am to public speaking", "Purest Green", "I can't read this childish handwriting", "I'll wager that purse has never....", "How do you do it?".

I didn't see The First until I was into my 20s I don't think and it's a very different show. I can hardly remember it apart from Jim Broadbent (which makes me say "ooh" in a Spanish accent). Think that might be my viewing for today.

They always die in the last episode - but I can't remember if that is true of III. Anyone? I could look it up I suppose.

I loved the ending of Forth at the time and for several years thought it one of the most moving parts of television ever made. I almost hate it now but that could just be as I've seen how pleased John Lloyd is with it and he really comes across as a smug, pompous prick[nb]I really enjoyed him and Stephen Fry, who is these days equally insufferable, arguing on QI like 6th formers about a tree falling in a forest and making a sound.[/nb]

Autopsy Turvey

The ending of The Third is my favourite. It is a death, but played totally for laughs ("Damn, I must have left it on the dresser"), and Edmund wins massively. The whole duel scene is great, especially Edmund leafing desperately through the instruction booklet of the "Armstrong-Whitworth four-pounder cannonette". And Baldrick's unusually sweet line, "another freckle on the nose of the giant pixie". Something for all the family.

Uncle TechTip

The ending to Forth is appreciated differently when you hear the story of why it was in slow motion - the pyrotechnics fired too quickly and they only had a second or two of useful footage, so they had no choice but slow it down. Had the effects worked, it would have been a very different ending and not as well received.

Quote from: Uncle TechTip on June 22, 2020, 01:34:59 PM
The ending to Forth is appreciated differently when you hear the story of why it was in slow motion - the pyrotechnics fired too quickly and they only had a second or two of useful footage, so they had no choice but slow it down. Had the effects worked, it would have been a very different ending and not as well received.

It sounds like the planned ending would have been more naturalistic and jarringly brutal.

Quote from: dissolute ocelot on June 22, 2020, 11:01:05 AM
Pies were popular in Regency England

William Pitt the Younger's last words just before he died have sometimes been alleged to be "I could eat one of Bellamy's veal pies", although biographers have disputed that on the grounds that he would probably have been too ill to digest anything at the time.

Quote from: Phoenix Lazarus on June 22, 2020, 01:41:51 PM
It sounds like the planned ending would have been more naturalistic and jarringly brutal.

The rushes show them all getting shot and dying painfully. It would have been an awful way to end the series.

Catalogue Trousers

As a quick duck back, Mrs Miggins' Pie Shop first appears - or at least is mentioned - in Blackadder II, showing that it's been around since Elizabethan times at least. Percy mentions taking that 'young roister-doister' Bob there for a slap-up feed in 'Bells'.

marquis_de_sad

Regarding pie shops, this book would probably be useful, but I can't find a copy online anywhere, not even the original out-of-print version.

Gulftastic

Quote from: Catalogue Trousers on June 22, 2020, 03:39:21 PM
As a quick duck back, Mrs Miggins' Pie Shop first appears - or at least is mentioned - in Blackadder II, showing that it's been around since Elizabethan times at least. Percy mentions taking that 'young roister-doister' Bob there for a slap-up feed in 'Bells'.

Edmund also blackmailed a bit extra from the Baby-eating Bishop of Bath and Wells for a nosh up there.