Richard Curtis and The Black Adder

TV Richard Curtis is interviewed in this week's Radio Times about his nu-Who episode on Saturday and he alludes to a first pilot for The Black Adder, which by a strange coincidence I happened to find on YouTube yesterday. He says of it:

"I watched some of my things before with groups of people. I remember when we did the first Blackadder, we had a little pilot, which we thought was pretty good. And I watched it with 12 friends. There was this horrible silence at the end."

And it's really not that bad. The episode is closer in tone to Blackadder II with Rowan Atkinson's cunning central performance pitched somewhere between the Bean-alike who turned up in the full first series and the sly wise-cracker from the later runs. It's the wrong Baldrick though and it lacks a proper sense of place due to the tiny sets and unclear time frame. Nevertheless, it's a fascinating first draft.

Click below to see the whole episode ....