Black Adder: All the scripts

Richard Curtis, Rowan Atkinson, Ben Elton. Black Adder: The Whole Damn Dynasty (1998) We watched the series when it first aired. A wonderfully absurd and intelligent send-up of our notions of the past. History ain’t what we think it is, especially when the Adder clan is part of it.
     Here are all the scripts, with some added material that makes better sense on the page than on the screen. As with all scripts, it helps to have seen the performances. Atkinson, Fry, Robinson et al are superb comic actors with impeccable timing and a large range of tone and sneer. The four Black Adder series are worth watching again and again; many episodes are available on YouTube. The series became increasingly dark, and the last one ends in the fog of war. As with all good satire, the targets are the ones labelled the Seven Deadly Sins in another context. It’s really the weaknesses and flaws of human nature that exercise the spleen of the writers. But I suspect that the weaknesses and flaws are the price we pay for the glory.
     Recommended for addicts; I doubt that the casual reader will find much to amuse them, but I have a faint hope I’m mistaken. ****