The Blackadder Pilot is getting aired for the first time!

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

So as we all know, Blackadder’s first series wasn’t very good, and then Ben Elton came along and fixed everything. However, unless you’re the sort of person who’d go deep-diving into the wastes of Dailymotion to find a grainy VHS bootleg of the unaired pilot, chances are you probably didn’t even know there was an earlier iteration of Prince Edmund. But indeed there was, and while it doesn’t quite reach the heights of the later stuff, it’s still infinitely preferable to what they did instead. This Blackadder is more recognizably the Blackadder we all know – even if Baldrick is conspicuously not Tony Robinson. (and it also seems to indicate that Tony’s claim to have coined the phrase “I have a cunning plan” was him talking out of his arse)

Anyway, just thought I’d let you know that they’re finally showing the pilot episode on television for the first time – which means we can all watch it in a little less grainy, dubiously legal a fashion. I figured it may be of interest to my fellow Dwarfers to note that Prince Henry in this pilot is played by none other than that big lig Todhunter himself, Robert Bathurst. He’s always in first episodes of things, isn’t he?

https://www.comedy.co.uk/tv/news/7301/blackadder-pilot-to-be-broadcast/

[Stephen Abootman]

[Dave]

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

[Stabbim]

you know, if there’s anyone who could’ve been as great a Rimmer as Chris Barrie over the years, it would’ve been Rowan Atkinson.

Can almost picture it

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

[RunawayTrain]

you know, if there’s anyone who could’ve been as great a Rimmer as Chris Barrie over the years, it would’ve been Rowan Atkinson.
Can almost picture it.

Incidentally there was one sitcom where they were both considered for the lead role, think it might have been The Thin Blue Line?

Ironically they’ve both ended up with similar … leanings, despite their satirical beginnings.

So as we all know, Blackadder’s first series wasn’t very good, and then Ben Elton came along and fixed everything. However, unless you’re the sort of person who’d go deep-diving into the wastes of Dailymotion to find a grainy VHS bootleg of the unaired pilot, chances are you probably didn’t even know there was an earlier iteration of Prince Edmund.

That is exactly the type of person I am, yet I almost certainly haven’t seen it.  I had totally forgotten until the news on here that there even was an unaired pilot, to my shame.

[Now if anyone knows whether the unaired Time Team pilot resides somewhere in the dark corners of the internet, I would be most interested in that too.  Tony Robinson *was* in that one.  (Though its predecessor, Time Signs, was really thoroughly lovely and thank goodness Channel 4 have it still up for legal viewing.)]

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