Rating: 
Summary: THE FIRST SEASON WILL ALWAYS BE THE BEST......
Review: The original "Black Adder" is one of the marvels of contemporary TV comedy (actually, it's now 21 years old). Brimming with imagination, intellect, and that irresistible grotesqueness known as British humor, it has everything going for it. For whatever reason, star Rowan Atkinson decided to quit writing his own material after this series (he relinquished that chore to upstart Ben Elton, whose name--at least in my book--will live in infamy as the man whose scathing 1986 critique of the great Benny Hill helped trigger the demise of the latter's classic sketch series.....it's never good form for one comic to criticize another). But the present DVD's a wholly different ballgame. The premiere episode in particular is itself worth the price: apart from the title character here being almost as mentally inept as his erstwhile assistant Baldrick, it features the incomparable Peter Cook as a murdered nobleman whose severed head comes back to haunt the twerpish Edmund Blackadder; many series fans are turned off by the visual unbearability of the gory humor. MY constitution's robust enough to withstand it. Indeed, it's an awful pity those cheapos at the BBC cut the series' budget after the first year, forcing all episodes to be videotaped on the same set, episode after episode. Here the combination of interior AND exterior shots provide the necessary variety. (Funny thing--great as British comedy is to many of us Americans, it was ironically their style of TV comedy that led to stateside TV comedy's artistic downfall, with loads of visually stagnant fare.) Never mind: Here's one of the supreme treasures of boob-tube comedy.
Rating:
Summary: THE FIRST SEASON WILL ALWAYS BE THE BEST......
Review: The original "Black Adder" is one of the marvels of contemporary TV comedy (actually, it's now 21 years old). Brimming with imagination, intellect, and that irresistible grotesqueness known as British humor, it has everything going for it. For whatever reason, star Rowan Atkinson decided to quit writing his own material after this series (he relinquished that chore to upstart Ben Elton, whose name--at least in my book--will live in infamy as the man whose scathing 1986 critique of the great Benny Hill helped trigger the demise of the latter's classic sketch series.....it's never good form for one comic to criticize another). But the present DVD's a wholly different ballgame. The premiere episode in particular is itself worth the price: apart from the title character here being almost as mentally inept as his erstwhile assistant Baldrick, it features the incomparable Peter Cook as a murdered nobleman whose severed head comes back to haunt the twerpish Edmund Blackadder; many series fans are turned off by the visual unbearability of the gory humor. MY constitution's robust enough to withstand it. Indeed, it's an awful pity those cheapos at the BBC cut the series' budget after the first year, forcing all episodes to be videotaped on the same set, episode after episode. Here the combination of interior AND exterior shots provide the necessary variety. (Funny thing--great as British comedy is to many of us Americans, it was ironically their style of TV comedy that led to stateside TV comedy's artistic downfall, with loads of visually stagnant fare.) Never mind: Here's one of the supreme treasures of boob-tube comedy.
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