TV comedy shows don't come any better than Blackadder. It's up there with Fawlty Towers, the BBC's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy TV series and the classic Monty Python. If you're one of its many fans, you'll be happy to hear that Warner Bros. has released a premium DVD version, titled Blackadder Remastered - The Ultimate Edition. This 6 disc collection features new digital restorations of the original program masters, all the specials, and a host of previously unreleased bonus features.
For the uninitiated, the four series and specials feature excellent black humor, savage wit, cunning word play and doses of alternative historical reality thrown in for good measure. Blackadder stars Rowan Atkinson in his finest role as the cunning anti-hero Edmund Blackadder along with his hapless, put upon servant, Baldrick, played by Tony Robinson. Along the way Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie and a host of other great British comics make excellent cameos. With each series set in a different historical period - from the Middle Ages right up to the WW1 - there's plenty of opportunity for some extreme comic roles. Verbal insults, cruelty and toying with historical facts are specialities.
"They do say, Mrs M., that verbal insults hurt more than physical pain," said Edmund Blackadder. "They are of course wrong, as you will soon discover...when I stick this toasting fork in your head."
Here's a great quote from the episode titled Potato:
"To you it's a potato, to me it's a potato. But to Sir Walter Bloody Raleigh it's country estates, fine carriages, and as many girls as his tongue can cope with. He's making a fortune out of the things; people are smoking them, building houses out of them... They'll be eating them next."
All the episodes were co-written by Richard Curtis and Ben Elton.
Bonus features in this release include new commentary and interviews with Rowan Atkinson, Stephen Fry, Richard Curtis, Ben Elton, Tony Robinson, and Tim McInnerny, the Blackadder Comic Relief material ,The Cavalier Years, Blackadder’s Christmas Carol, and the time travelling episode Blackadder Back and Forth.
Blackadder Remastered - The Ultimate Edition is a must buy for those interested in excellent British comedy. Check out the official BBC America website here.
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