I remember being invited by Humphrey Barclay,
who you may remember at London Weekend Television...
-LLOYD: Yeah. -...ITV, you know when I was first...
You know, just after I had left Oxford, really,
and he asked me to write an essay
on what kind of comedy programme I would like to be involved with.
And it was all tremendously pretentious stuff about the fact that,
you know, there shouldn't be a studio audience
and it should all be shot on location and shot on film,
desperately trying to get away from the traditional simple sitcom
or sketch show format that was popular then, as now.
And of course in the end it was largely ambitious but pretentious waffle.
I mean, sometimes, when... Trying to be original
merely because you've learned to be different, it doesn't always...
Well, it rarely works, actually.
I mean, sometimes it can work, but actually if you just try and learn
from the past rather than...
Rather than reject it outright,
it can be more beneficial.
Oh, gosh, yes. Well, I remember reading the scripts for the first time
and them reading like a delightfully sort of cosy feel to them,
instead of the extreme scale and ambition of the first series,
which was, you know... You know, worthy, I think.
In its way it was a worthy thing to have done and experimented with,
but there was always this feeling
where you always hoped it was going to be funny
rather than we believed it was going to be funny,
which was a bit nerve-racking for everyone,
not least the actors.
LLOYD: I think part of the difficulty was
that trying to be funny wasn't really what we were about in the first series.
We were awfully arrogant, really.
Yeah, yeah, it was the usual... Absolutely.
Pretentious bluster formed quite a large part of it.
No, it is hugely ironic that having set about
to make the first series of Blackadder as unlike Fawlty Towers as we could,
by the time we'd got to the second series they'd completely re-jigged it
in the way that it was, we did that then with three sets.
You know, and something quite claustrophobic and hierarchical.
So in many ways we sort of learned the lesson of our ways
and actually, our outright rejection of the traditional sitcom form,
you know, was not...
LLOYD: There are good reasons for it, aren't there?
Yeah, there are good reasons why sitcoms tend to have
the shape that they do.
They made a tremendous difference.
It was just a joy to have real people in the room,
and to be recording it like a theatre show, really.
We did rehearse it all week and then we put on a show for two hours.
Admittedly, half an hour of programme came out
the other end of it, but it felt like...
It felt like what it was, a live performance.
And people even now actually are rather surprised when you tell them
that you had a studio audience for the second, third and fourth series.
They just assume that either an audience had seen it later,
had seen it afterwards or...
Or that it was canned or that it was dubbed onto the soundtrack,
when in fact it wasn't.
And even though when I look at the Blackadder now,
which I don't do very often,
but when I have seen episodes, I can see
moments when I stammered a bit or the pause is a bit too long.
And you think, ''God, how frustrating, really,''
that we sort of did it on the hoof and we might do one retake but only one.
And how much better it would've been if we'd got every little pause
and every little inflection absolutely right
in a sort of filmic way of doing take after take after take,
which we didn't do.
And yet...
you have to pay that price for slight inconsistency
and slight errors and fault lines in order to get the energy
and the feel and the joy of a live performance.
And in the end, I think it was probably a sacrifice worth making.
But I can... You can't see, I can see now,
when I do watch it, you think,
''I'm sure I could have said that line better.
''Oh, dear, Tony came in too early.
''I wish we'd...''
But in fact that was it, that's what it was.
You know, you just have to live with the way it was.
It's odd, really, about the character of the Blackadder,
where the inherent comedy of his situation
is rooted because basically he's a bright and able man.
And yet things go wrong for him in a way that is...
That we try to make funny.
But you know, he wasn't a buffoon or he didn't...
I suppose he just tended to over-think things,
didn't he, to out-think himself?
Or maybe it was just bad luck.
In the end, he was just unlucky.
And of course, fatedly,
he always allies himself with Baldrick.
It's strange, that inter-reliance,
you'd think someone as bright as the Blackadder
wouldn't spend any time that he had to with Baldrick.
And yet he does, there's a strange inter-reliance.
It is like Basil Fawlty and Manuel.
You know, why doesn't he just sack Manuel?
Well, there's some way in which they need each other.
The Blackadder and Baldrick need each other,
not only for the sake of
to allow us to make the jokes about them
but you know, there is an inter-reliance there again.
LLOYD: I've got this theory, the reason that people love it so much
is because of Baldrick, because he's everyman, he's us.
-Yeah, yeah, yeah. -You think there's anything in that?
Well, he's a pretty dim version of everyman.
I'm not sure I'd like Baldrick to represent me
in the sort of canon of human existence.
(CHUCKLES)
But I can see how he...
He certainly has a very...
He has an attitude to life which is uncorrupted by expectations
or class structures or education or anything...
-He just... -Deodorant.
Or deodorant.
That he just takes things at face value and deals with them as he finds them.
And its... It's very, very...
I can see how, that he has a very straightforward attitude.
LLOYD: But he's also lovable.
You wouldn't really call Blackadder lovable almost ever, would you?
No, no.
Well, no, and the Blackadder is a pretty relentless cynic.
Although, you see,
in my opinion, like all the best sitcom characters,
pleasingly two-dimensional, pleasingly simple.
Always the same.
You don't feel at the beginning of any episode of the Blackadder
that the Blackadder has learnt something
from the previous three episodes.
You just know that he's gonna have the same old sarcastic,
care-worn attitude to life.
And that's very reassuring, which is a problem.
I think it would've been a huge challenge and difficulty
if we'd ever tried to make a movie of the Blackadder.
Because in movies, characters are supposed to be three-dimensional
and they're supposed to realise the error of their ways and change
and develop and they're different at the end of the movie
as to how they were at the beginning.
Maybe we could have contrived a conceit
which would've got round that,
but in the end, I think the Blackadder is,
like Basil Fawlty or anyone comparable,
is a sitcom character par excellence.
And would've been very, very difficult to translate into any other...
Into any other medium, you know, particularly
a 90-minute lump of entertainment like a film.
I think it would've been very tricky.
I mean, what's been pleasing about the Blackadder in many ways
is this feeling, in the 25 years since we first started doing it,
is it does seem to have a longevity in the audience's eyes, they...
Of course, its period nature helps that,
the fact that there's nothing really to date it
in people's eyes, there isn't a 1 970s sofa or wardrobe
or political attitude to sort of sully the waters.
In the end, you can just enjoy it for what it is.
Even though actually, at least some of the...
You know, some of the comic attitude of the Blackadder is the fact
that he is, was, a 20th century man,
really, put in a period situation, wasn't he?
He didn't really accurately reflect or necessarily...
his time, he definitely had the attitude of a modern audience,
placed in a period context.
And that I think engages the audience and gives it an extra sort of
satirical sort of tone to the whole series.
I think that helps.
Well, I do have a problem with the letter B.
I do, yeah, quite often when B is followed by a vowel.
''In a bubble'' was...
I remember at school, my schoolmates getting a lot of amusement
out of getting me to say the word ''bubble''.
And me going... Stammering a bit.
So, I remember the one we had trouble with was
Battersea Dogs Home, wasn't it?
Battersea Dogs Home, which we had a problem with in the live recording
in front of the audience and I just couldn't say...
In fact, I'm having difficulty saying it now.
Battersea Dogs Home was what I was saying.
LLOYD: And then I said, ''Say Crufts instead.''
Yes, I did, 'cause... And I got the word down
from the control room that I should say ''Crufts'', which is what I did.
And of course it got this huge
and totally disproportionate audience response,
an absolutely astronomic laugh because they loved the fact
that I'd finally found a way round the stammer.
But of course, then that laugh
had to be taken out because otherwise it would be
completely incomprehensible to the listening and viewing audience.
Yes, very good, Crufts.
It was a stroke of genius from John, I have to say.
(LLOYD CHUCKLES)
But ''Bob'' wasn't... ''Bob'' wasn't an issue.
For some reason, B followed by a vowel and then another consonant
and nothing else after it, ''Bob'',
is fine, I can say ''Bob'' as much as you like.
I don't have a problem.
Whereas ''bauble'', you know, like a bauble of wool,
that I would have more of a problem with.
LLOYD: Did Richard deliberately...
There was one in the Mr Ploppy episode, wasn't there? Bibble.
-Just said that people... -Bibble.
...put a bucket on their head and say, ''Bibble.''
-And say, ''Bibble.'' -Yeah.
You don't have a problem with Bibble either, do you?
No. I can't remember.
If I try and say it now, then I do have a problem with it, actually.
-Bibble. I'd say, ''Bibble.'' -Bibble.
Yeah, it's a mystery, it's a mystery.
Well, with the second series,
we started to establish the repertory company
that we've, you know...
Not only a sort of claustrophobic and dramatic setting,
but also quite a small and neat group of people
who had a lot of natural creative empathy
with one another, which continued until the end.
LLOYD: How did you find Miranda to work with? Because it's...
Yes. Well, great, as I recall. I mean, she was...
Yeah, yeah, despite being a very good actress,
she seemed very willing to muck in.
Because she did effectively become a member of the repertory company.
-Didn't she? -Definitely, yeah.
And she returned on a number of occasions.
But she had such a sort of brave and eccentric
creative curiosity to her that it meant that she...
You know, she didn't really care what she did or how she did it,
she was just going to enjoy exploring all the possibilities.
And that's where that Elizabeth thing came from.
It was so interesting in the end, what she did and the way she did it.
I thought Rik was great.
I loved the fact that actually it was entirely complementary
to the attitude of the Blackadder.
It seemed to me that the two worked fantastically well together.
I remember being asked by a number of people,
you know, ''Don't you find it rather annoying that Rik Mayall
''comes in and is extremely funny
''and appears to steal some of your thunder?''
But because I've never really viewed any acting job,
except perhaps Mr Bean, I suppose, as being a singular thing,
where all or virtually all the comic investments
should be in one particular character.
In the end, the better everyone is, the better everyone looks.
It's like, I remember being at a dinner party with an actor who was making a...
a very honest pitch for the idea that it's much better
to be by far the best performer in a drama or in a programme
and for everyone else to be rubbish and then you can really shine,
you know, in comparison to other people.
And it seemed to me to be such a ludicrous way of looking at things,
that if other people aren't good, you are never going to look good,
no matter how good you are.
You are very much inter-reliant.
Yeah, it did seem to get more difficult as we went on.
I think my overriding memory of the whole of the Blackadder canon
was of it being stressful and satisfying.
That's how I remember it.
Well, you know, it was good having so many writers in the room,
apart from the writers themselves, who were not in the room.
(CHUCKLING)
Which, of course... But what did it result in?
Yeah, I remember it being intermittently hilarious,
I think is how I might describe it.
But I remember long, long periods
in which it was really not very funny at all.
You know, when we got in...
When either individuals or as a room, we just got in a bit of a slump.
-LLOYD: Yeah. -Or grump.
And it was sometimes very, very difficult to drag us out of the...
drag us out of the ditch.
Well, this is the plague village, we're going to see that.
-I had a riding lesson. -''Like a real movie...''
-''Like a real movie set,'' it says here. -Yes.
Which is quite a funny thing to say about a real movie set.
(BOTH CHUCKLING)
It's true. I suppose that's the thing, that one had a sense
-that one was playing at it. -The other thing is... Exactly.
It gives the impression of your kind of inexperience, really,
and your wonder, really, at the fact that the whole thing is happening.
Yes.
And the mechanisms and processes that are going on
which are relatively unfamiliar to you.
Well, I was completely out of my depth.
Yeah, that's another way of putting it.
-Did you like having that haircut? -Like it? No.
It was pretty difficult buying Mars Bars for several weeks,
having to sport that haircut.
Well, it was very bleak.
I remember it being genuinely a Northumbrian winter weather
of the mid-20th century.
Being very, very cold, snowy...
and not like today.
I just remember the sort of...
Just the sense of sort of difficulty of everything, wasn't it?
I mean, the sort of scale of what we were trying to do
and the number of animals and children and extras and...
You know, most of whom you felt had a slightly miserable couple of weeks.
Well, it definitely felt out of control. Didn't it? That was the thing.
-Yeah. Yeah. -That you... I didn't feel...
I was the producer, I didn't know about all these dogs and braziers and things,
somebody had made all these executive decisions
at some other level.
I don't know,
I just remember a feeling of us not quite knowing what we were doing.
That, snow-covered, was where,
I'm fairly certain, was where the horse arreared up
-and I fell off the back. -Yes, that's right.
-Well, I say I... -One of your people fell off the back.
Who was that actually? Was he your stunt person?
Yes, it certainly was a stunt person, but I can't remember which...
But you did some of the riding there, didn't you?
Yeah, the riding I enjoyed. I learned to ride
-for the first series. -For this.
I was taught by a member of the Swedish
Olympic Equestrian Team,
who was a fantastic rider and a very, very nice man,
but of course completely out of his depth.
I mean, he was being forced to paddle in the shallow end
instead of the deep end where he was more at home and I was...
I went there for weeks and weeks and weeks.
And learned a little bit.
And then I learned a huge amount
within two days of encountering the real horses that we used.
And the woman who came with the horses,
-who was tremendously used to making... -Actors look all right, yeah.
...actors look good.
And then I suddenly started to find a confidence with it,
since which time I've hardly ridden at all.
I hardly ever ride.
Is it your masterwork, Ro?
(CHUCKLES)
Well, it's certainly not my masterwork.
I may be part of a shared...
work which has done very well.
Hmm. Yeah, sorry there, I'm a bit stuck for words.
Well, I do think one of the hallmarks of it is that it seems
better than one remembers it.
On the odd occasions I do see it,
you think, ''This is actually quite good.''
-It's slightly embarrassing that it's... -Yeah, and it is... And it did...
It was representative of a moment in all our lives,
that's why I think its very...
It's sort of futile, really, to talk about reunions
or a fifth series or anything like that,
because I think it represented a comedy consensus
between a group of individuals at a certain time in their lives.
And as soon as you talk about...
As soon as you try and recreate that
chemistry five years later or 1 0 years later or 30 years later,
it's very, very difficult.
When we were filming here, it was the first time
I'd ever met a camp Geordie.
We had a dresser who looked after my clothes and wardrobe
and during my childhood here in the northeast, I just remember...
(IN GEORDIE ACCENT) ...the Geordie accent was the one that men spoke,
it had a natural kind of masculinity about it.
And suddenly you heard this man,
who was talking like that in the most unusual tone.
-It was a very, very... -What did he talk about, then?
Well, I can't remember, just what dressers do talk about,
just things that are quite...
had to do with... I can't remember. I'm sorry, I can't remember.
I mean, the main thing I remember about the wardrobe was the codpiece.
Or the codpieces, I remember we had
increasingly ludicrous codpieces.
And trying to decide which was the best compromise,
that wasn't so lewd that your eyes were glued to it
rather than the face of the actor the entire time when it was in the shot.
And we compromised on something which actually now, when you look at it,
looks still fairly extraordinary.
I'm not sure that you'd want to do that kind of thing now or today.
No, I think in the end we were... we were over-ambitious,
and slightly pretentious in our approach,
so Michael Grade was right, really, to cancel the series.
He was.
Well, we got smacked for it, we learned our lesson...
Yeah, yeah. But we'd already learned the lesson before they cancelled it,
-that was what was frustrating. -That, I think, is right.
Yeah, I just think that the Blackadder represented
a particular comedy consensus between a group of creative individuals
at a particular time in their lives and it worked extremely well.
And it was just a wonderful fluke, really, that it did work so well.
I mean, you may say, ''Well, there were lots of talented people involved
''so it was bound to be good.''
But as we know, that's no guarantee of success whatsoever.
We were just very lucky to find ourselves all together
at a certain time, which was basically the 1 980s, wasn't it?
It was a child of the 80s, the Blackadder.
You know, and it worked very well for us all.
Okay. Thank you all.