Produced 1989, Blackadder IV is set in the trenches of Flanders 1917. The premise of the series are Captain Blackadder's attempts of avoiding combat, which drives the humour of the series from the very first episode and he always succeeds or at least gets out of it unharmed.
Not so in the end.
In the final scene of the last episode Goodbyeee (title taken from a contemporary popular Music Hall song), the protagonists gather. The cynical career soldier Captain Edmund Blackadder, who deep down knew all the time what was coming to him and that he would one day run out of his luck, the coward Captain Darling who'd thought that he could ride it out on a cushy staff desk job, but was sent to the front line by his General, whose trusty "pyjama folder" he so far had been. (One has probably never seen a finer piece of acting genius than Tim McInnerny's when Captain Darling finally understands the truth - and, above all, comes to terms with it in the end.)
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| "Made a note in my diary on my way here. Simply says, "Bugger."" |
It shows as well what an excellent actor Rowan Atkinson is and how subtly the script deals with the situation. When Darling arrives at the trench, the Captains greet each other the first time without contempt, a premonition of things to come and when he throws his hat down on the suitcase we know that he has succumbed to his fate.
For the two syllables "Well, quite" alone, his reaction to the admissions of the others (he never says how he himself feels) he'd deserved at least an Oscar.
And in the end, "Good luck everyone", his final words and the last words in the series, are the first, not just in the episode, not just in this series, but in the entire show, he utters without cynicism.
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| "Godd luck everyone." |
Historic parenthesis: The only superficially funny figure of Lieutenant George is actually shockingly close to a tragic historic reality.
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| "Don't forget your stick, Lieutenant." |
When the First World War arrived, in 1914, the aristocracy welcomed it. They saw this as a chance to justify their position, by assuming the mantle of military leadership that had been the original role of many of their ancestors. But the war was disastrous for them: frequently, the young lords were given junior commissions on the battlefront, leading their men with bravery in their hearts but only a pistol or a baton in their hands. They were first in the German machine-gunners’ sights. While one in eight British soldiers perished during the four-year conflict, the ratio was one in five for the nobility... After peace, it seemed that the aristocracy was spent. As a political observer wrote at the time, “The Feudal System vanished in blood and fire, and the landed classes were consumed.” [Highlighting by me.]In the end, they go over the top, slowly vanish in the debris and finally in the mists of history.
The writer of these lines is a historian by training (not by profession and WWI hadn't been among my subjects). Still, although I've read (and hopefully understood) one of the probably best books on the topic of the "Great War", it had taught me less about it, about war generally and about soldiering (as far as a woman can understand it in the first place) than this little bit of TV genius.
Transcript:
(Darling enters, wearing helmet)
George: Sir! (salutes)
Edmund: (hangs up the phone, turns) Captain Darling...
Darling: Captain Blackadder.
Edmund: Here to join us for the last waltz?
Darling: (nervous) Erm, yes -- tired of folding the general's pyjamas.
George: Well, this is splendid, comradely news! Together, we'll fight for king
and country, and be sucking sausages in Berlin by teatime.
Edmund: Yes, I hope their cafes are well stocked; everyone seems determined
to eat out the moment they arrive.
George: No, really, this is brave, splendid and noble! (hesitates) Sir?
Edmund: Yes, Lieutenant?
George: I'm scared, sir.
Baldrick: I'm scared too, sir.
George: I mean, I'm the last of the tiddlywinking leapfroggers from the Golden
Summer of 1914. I don't want to die. I'm really not overkeen on dying
at all, sir.
Edmund: How are you feeling, Darling?
Darling: Erm, not all that good, Blackadder -- rather hoped I'd get through the
whole show; go back to work at Pratt & Sons; keep wicket for the
Croydon gentlemen; marry Doris... Made a note in my diary on my way
here. Simply says, "Bugger."
Edmund: Well, quite.
(a voice outside gives orders)
Edmund: Ah well, come on. Let's move.
Voice: Fix bayonets!
(They start to go outside)
Edmund: Don't forget your stick, Lieutenant.
George: Oh no, sir -- wouldn't want to face a machine gun without this!
(outside, they all line up as the shelling stops)
Darling: Listen! Our guns have stopped.
George: You don't think...?
Baldrick: Maybe the war's over. Maybe it's peace!
George: Well, hurrah! The big nobs have gone round the table and yanked the
iron out of the fire!
Darling: Thank God! We lived through it! The Great War: 1914-1917.
George: Hip hip!
All but Edmund: Hurray!
Edmund: (loading his revolver) I'm afraid not. The guns have stopped because
we're about to attack. Not even our generals are mad enough to shell
their own men. They think it's far more sporting to let the Germans
do it.
George: So we are, in fact, going over. This is, as they say, "it".
Edmund: I'm afraid so, unless I think of something very quickly.
Voice: Company, one pace forward!
(everyone steps forward)
Baldrick: Ooh, there's a nasty splinter on that ladder, sir! A bloke could
hurt himself on that.
Voice: Stand ready!
(everyone puts a foot forward)
Baldrick: I have a plan, sir.
Edmund: Really, Baldrick? A cunning and subtle one?
Baldrick: Yes, sir.
Edmund: As cunning as a fox who's just been appointed Professor of Cunning
at Oxford University?
Baldrick: Yes, sir.
Voice: On the signal, company will advance!
Edmund: Well, I'm afraid it'll have to wait. Whatever it was, I'm sure it was
better than my plan to get out of this by pretending to be mad.
I mean, who would have noticed another madman round here?
(whistle blows)
Edmund: Good luck, everyone. (blows his whistle)
(Everyone yells as they go over the top. German guns fire before
they're even off the ladders. The scene changes to slow motion,
and explosions happen all around them. [An echoed piano slowly plays
the Blackadder theme.] The smoke and flying earth begins to obscure
vision as the view changes to the battlefield moments later: empty
and silent with barbed wire, guns and bodies strewn across it. [A
bass drum beats slowly.] That view in turn changes to the same field
as it is today: overgrown with grasses and poppies, peaceful, with
chirping birds.)
Captain Edmund Blackadder
ROWAN ATKINSON
Private S. Baldrick
TONY ROBINSON
General Sir Anthony Cecil
Hogmanay Melchett
STEPHEN FRY
Lieutenant The Honourable
George Colthurst St. Barleigh
HUGH LAURIE
Captain Kevin Darling
TIM McINNERNY
Complete transcripts for the entire series and full credits here.
