Blackadder Goes Forth is the fourth series of the BBC sitcom Blackadder, written by Richard Curtis and Ben Elton, which aired from 28 September to 2 November 1989 on BBC1. The series placed the recurring characters of Blackadder, Baldrick, and George as British Army soldiers in a Flanders trench during World War I, and followed their various doomed attempts to escape from the trenches to avoid death under the misguided command of General Melchett. The series references famous people of the time and criticises the Army's leadership during the war, culminating in the ending of its final episode, in which the soldiers are ordered to carry out a lethal charge of enemy lines.
Despite initial concerns that the comedy might trivialise the war, it was acclaimed and won the British Academy Television Award for Best Comedy Series in 1989. In 2000 it was placed 16th by industry professionals in a list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes compiled by the British Film Institute. However, some historians and politicians have criticised it for presenting an inaccurate view of the war, reinforcing the myth of "lions led by donkeys".
Plot Blackadder Goes Forth is set in 1917 on the Western Front in the trenches of World War I. Captain Edmund Blackadder (Rowan Atkinson) is a professional soldier in the British Army who, until the outbreak of the Great War, has enjoyed a relatively danger-free existence fighting natives who were usually "two feet tall and armed with dried grass". Finding himself trapped in the trenches with another "big push" planned, his concern is to avoid being sent "over the top" to probable death. The series thus chronicles Blackadder's attempts to escape the trenches through various schemes, most of which fail due to bad fortune, misunderstandings and the general incompetence of his comrades. The aforementioned comrades are his second-in-command, idealistic upper-class Edwardian twit Lieutenant George St Barleigh (Hugh Laurie) and their profoundly stupid but dogged batman Private S. Baldrick (Tony Robinson).The first initial "S" is taken from the first episode of Blackadder the Third, in which Baldrick assumes his first name must be "Sodoff", as when he introduced himself to other children when he was growing up, they generally said "Yes, we know. Sod off, Baldrick". ()
More than the Germans, who are generally unseen, Blackadder's nemesis come in the form of his superior, the eccentric General Melchett (Stephen Fry) who rallies his troops from a château from the front, and Melchett's bureaucratic assistant, Captain Kevin Darling (Tim McInnerny). Despite the two being of equal rank, Blackadder treats Darling with contempt – while the former is on the front line, the latter is "folding the general's pyjamas". Their animosity is mutual, largely as a result of Blackadder exploiting the comic potential of Darling's surname at every opportunity.
Themes Blackadder Goes Forth is darker in tone than the previous three Blackadder series and most sitcoms, and presents an anti-war message. The dialogue is marked throughout by satirical musings about the nature of the war, its origins and the effects on the soldiers who suffered over its course. The idea that the soldiers suffered whilst their commanders remained safely distant from the action was also referenced on many occasions, such as when Melchett says to Baldrick, "Don't you worry my boy, if you should falter, remember that Captain Darling and I are behind you!", to which Blackadder responds, "About 35 miles behind you." In the episode "Corporal Punishment", Blackadder justifies the shooting for food of a carrier pigeon (which turns out to be Melchett's pet, Speckled Jim) by saying, "With 50,000 men getting killed a week, who's going to miss a pigeon?" This episode sees Blackadder being sentenced to death by firing squad for the act, a reference to the capital sentences carried out under the laws of war in force at the time.
In "Private Plane", after receiving word that Blackadder and Baldrick may have been killed when shot down over German lines, Melchett tries to cheer George up by showing him a life-size model (measuring seventeen square feet) of land recaptured by the British, a commentary on the high human cost and small physical gains achieved by attacks in the middle years of the war. Later in the same episode, Blackadder describes the Great War as "a war which would be a damn sight simpler if we just stayed in England and shot 50,000 of our own men a week".
Field Marshal Douglas Haig, whose orders are alleged to have resulted in hundreds of thousands of British deaths at the battles of Passchendaele and the Somme, is continually referenced.Fussell, Paul. 1975. "The Great War and Modern Memory" Blackadder himself describes Haig's attempts at an advance as no more than "another gargantuan effort to move his drinks cabinet six inches closer to Berlin" and, when asked by Melchett for suggestions to improve the troops' morale, jokingly suggests Haig's resignation and suicide. In "Goodbyeee", a scene parodies Haig's professional abilities by depicting the field marshal (portrayed by Geoffrey Palmer) playing with toy soldiers, which he sweeps nonchalantly from trench to trench and then into a rubbish bin, while listening to Blackadder's plea to get out of the big push on the telephone.
The series recalls a number of actual historical events of the war, such as the Christmas truce of 1914. Blackadder recalls the event: "Both sides advanced further during one Christmas piss-up than they did in the next two and a half years of war." References are also made to the popular culture of the era, as well as the previous series. The episode "Private Plane" sees the return of the characters of Lord Flashheart and Bob from the second series episode "Bells" and also an appearance of the German flying ace, the Baron von Richthofen. A plot thread in the third episode "Major Star" involves Blackadder's dislike of the silent film star Charlie Chaplin, whom he finds "as funny as getting an arrow through the neck, and then finding there's a gas bill tied to it".
In the fifth episode "General Hospital", the anti-German sentiment in Britain during the war is repeatedly referenced. General Melchett orders Blackadder to find out who is behind the leak in top-secret battle plans and immediately, though erroneously, pins it on a "German spy" (who is later discovered to be one of their own). Blackadder interrogates Captain Darling, who vehemently denies being a spy and says that he is "as British as Queen Victoria", to which Blackadder sarcastically replies "So your father is German, you're half German and you married a German?". Blackadder's retort references the fact that Victoria was a member of the House of Hanover and that her husband Prince Albert was a prince from the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. In 1917, Victoria's grandson, King George V, changed the name of the royal house from Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to Windsor in an effort to appease British nationalist feelings.
The final episode of this series, "Goodbyeee", although true to the series' usual comedy style through most of the preceding scenes, featured a non-comedic final scene, in which the main characters (except General Melchett) are finally sent over the top. Darling keeps some sense of hope, saying this may be the very last battle and history will write the conflict as "The Great War, 1914–1917!". Disregarding Baldrick's claim to have one last plan to save them from the impending doom, Blackadder delivers the final line:
To the sound of a slow, minimal piano version of the title theme, the four are seen in slow-motion, charging into the fog and smoke of no man's land, with gunfire and explosions all around. The script states that they "will not get far". The scene then fades into footage of a sunny poppy field and the sound of birdsong.
Episodes
The series aired for six episodes broadcast on BBC1 on Thursdays at 9.30pm between 28 September and 2 November 1989, ending nine days before Remembrance Day. The titles of the first five episodes, "Captain Cook", "Corporal Punishment", "Major Star", "Private Plane" and "General Hospital" are puns based on the pairing of a military rank and another word related to the episode's content. The final episode, "Goodbyeee", was the title of a period song.Goodbye-ee, Goodbye-ee, Wipe the tear, baby dear, from your eye-ee Tho' it's hard to part, I know, I'll be tickled to death to go, Don't cry-ee, don't sigh-ee, There's a silver lining in the sky-ee! Bon Soir, old thing! Cheerio! Chin-Chin, Nah-Poo, Toodle-oo, Goodbye-ee
Production
Writing and rehearsals
Writers Ben Elton and Richard Curtis wrote the scripts for Blackadder episodes separately using word processors and then swapped the disks containing the scripts for each other to add or remove jokes and dialogue. Curtis recalls that they stuck to a policy whereby if one removed a line for not being funny, then it was never put back.
During rehearsals, the script was exhaustively discussed and redrafted by the cast, with Richard Curtis having the final say on the content. Fry, Laurie and Atkinson were comic writers and performers themselves, and having worked together on previous series were not afraid to question the script and make suggestions. For example, Captain Darling was originally called Captain Cartwright and was renamed when Stephen Fry recalled a boy at his school with the surname Darling, who had found his own surname a constant embarrassment. Curtis recalls that he was initially reluctant to change the name, as he considered it a one-off joke.
Speaking to The Times about the ending of the show in 1989, Curtis hinted that the collaborative writing process caused tensions amongst the cast: Twenty years on, Curtis recalled in the documentary Blackadder Rides Again that: "They would literally sit around for the entire time discussing the script... sometimes we would just say to them 'if you stood up and tried to act this script out, you would find out things about it.'" Ben Elton stated that by opening it up, they allowed the cast to question every aspect of the script.
During Blackadder Rides Again, Tony Robinson likewise recalls that these script meetings could be uncomfortable, and has been less reserved speaking about the script rehearsals since. In an interview with The Daily Telegraph he suggests that although relations between the actors were generally cordial "There was bad feeling between the writers and the performers – the writers felt we were unilaterally altering the script and altering it for the worse. At end of the first day of rehearsals, the writers would go away and by the time they came back we would have changed an awful lot of it. By the end, they felt we had run away with it. There were quite a lot of emotions flashing around about that."
Producer John Lloyd, speaking to The Times in 1989, hinted that it was the draining scripting and rehearsal process that led to the writers deciding not to make another series:
Casting