Another Blackadder series -could it happen?

cast of Blackadder Goes ForthAnother Blackadder series? Amazingly it has been more than twenty years since we last saw BBC’s Blackadder on our TVs (excluding repeats of course), and star Rowan Atkinson is not opposed to the idea of resurrecting  the character in a new guise – even though he believes it wouldn’t be easy.

In an interview for this week’s Radio Times, the Mr Bean and Johnny English star admitted he didn’t “actually like the process of making anything – with the possible exception of Blackadder because the responsibility for making that series funny was on many shoulders”, not just his own as with Mr Bean. Indeed, co-stars Tony Robinson, Tim McInnerny, Stephen Fry,  Hugh Laurie and Miranda Richardson are just some of the names who shared that responsibility during the series’ run from 1983 to 1989.

When asked if the eponymous character might resurface at some point, Atkinson said it “certainly” wasn’t impossible”. “That’s about as optimistic as I can be,” he added, “and I’d rather not speculate on when it could be set. But Blackadder represented the creative energy we all had in the 80s. To try to replicate that 30 years on wouldn’t be easy.”

Atkinson, Richard Curtis and Ben Elton created and wrote the series in which Atkinson played different incarnations of Edmund Blackadder, each a descendant of the last. The troops prepare to go over the top in Blackadder Goes ForthThe final series, Blackadder Goes Forth which finished in the final poignant episode with a silent scene in which British troops emerged from WW1 trenches to go ‘over the top’.

Ben Elton has said in the past that he felt the series should not be re-visited but if he could be persuaded to change his mind, there would be a big readymade audience for the another series.
The four series are available on BBC iplayer as well as DVD and audio.

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