Static Thoughts - Blackadder Goes Forth

Edited by Robert Beach 

On this day 97 years ago, the guns of World War 1 finally fell silent as on the 11^th hour of the 11^th day of the 11^th month the Great War came to a close. The war had a total military and civilian casualty report of close to 38 million people, owing mainly to the sausage grinder that was trench warfare in the bulk of the war.  For literal years, the trenches would sit ideally as generals ordered their men into suicidal headline rushes across No Man’s Land. By all accounts, it was one of the cruelest and most nightmarish experiences of “combat” in human history.

who would’ve thought there was a comedy in all that?  

Well, it turns out geniuses thought that because in 1989 Richard Curtis and Ben Elton gave us just that with Blackadder Goes Forth, the 4^th and final season of the acclaimed BBC sitcom Blackadder starring Rowan Atkinson, Tony Robinson, Hugh Laurie, Tim McInnerny, and Stephen Fry. The season is remembered as one of the show’s absolute best and is often cited as the perfect vision of World War 1 in public consciousness. 

For those of you who’ve never encountered the British sitcom Blackadder before, now it might be charitably described as an anthology show. The basic set-up is to follow the titular Edmund Blackadder, played by Rowan Atkinson, a scheming and self-centered Britt who often finds himself caught between the incompetence of those above him and the bumbling of those beneath. Over the course of the show’s 4 seasons, we follow various Blackadders along the Blackadder family line throughout English history: from the middle ages to the regency and then finally to World War 1 with Black Adder Goes Forth. 

Each season also sees some new iteration of Tony Robinson’s character Baldrick, Blackadder’s moronic accomplice and subordinate. Over the various seasons, additional actors took up reoccurring parts such as Hugh Laurie. at first, the show introduced Laurie as Prince Regent George IV in season 3, but stuck around as an upper-class twit for season 4. Then Stephen Fry who appeared briefly as the Duke of Wellington at the end of the 3^rd season and was up-jumped to a full cast member for the fourth and final season. 

Which leads us to the basic set-up for Blackadder Goes Forth. The season finds Edmunt Blackadder as a captain in 1917 World War 1, saddled with the dopey Sergeant Baldrick and the hopeless unaware and optimistic Lieutenant George. The trio are often caught up in a scheme of Blackadder’s to avoid being sent into No Man’s Land as part of the bumbling strategies of general Melchett and his sycophantic aid Captain Darling. 

For a setting so mired in tragedy, this set-up might be one of the purest examples of sitcom genre tropes I’ve ever encountered.  General Melchett makes a great overhanging foil for Blackadder, even better than the hilariously bumbling Prince George from season 3. Where George was well-meaning and idiotic, Melchett is completely unaware of himself and his disposition for Blackadder is fickle to say the least. He’s a character Blackadder can’t really steamroller over or threaten to abandon if the need arises, essentially the perfect roadblock. 

This is part of how the show converts the sort of publicly agreed upon aspects of World War 1 into sitcom tomfoolery. One of the most prevalent narratives of the war is the so-called “donkeys leading lions” idea; that the actual men of the war were a waste generation, tragically lashed the whim of cruel or incompetent leadership. There is no better visualization of that ideal than General Melchett; he’s pigheaded, but completely incompetent in command of tremendous power and completely out of touch. He views war as a glorious undertaking so long as he’s not the one dying for king and country. 

All of these monstrous elements express themselves in his sitcom comedy, the way he’s always making terrible decisions to throw Blackadder into shenanigans, or how his stubborn insistence on an idea or scheme forces the plot on a set track. A lot of the best sitcoms have to indulge in making their characters almost cartoonishly awful, like Sienfeld or Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and General Melchett might be the best iteration of that fact. He allows the show an incredibly easy story engine as Melchett can just command some issue of the week and be done with it. He’s literally “orders from head office” to drive whatever shenanigans is needed that day while at the same time he’s the perfect pop in to keep Blackadder from really winning the day.

That’s a key aspect of the show’s comedy as well. The idea that “winning” is never really on the table for Blackadder. For a character like Blackadder, we relate to him because he represents us at our most petty and selfish, constantly concerned with his own ends and viewing everyone around him as annoying barriers to our his own goals. The thing is that with this amoral and indulgent character having them win any kind of conflict can drain our sympathies because then they stop being a relatable character and become a fantasy; one we’re decidedly aware of. 

In Blackadder Goes Forth, they find the perfect way around this issue through the setting of World War 1. Where previous seasons focused on Blackadder’s schemes to attain money or power, here Blackadder’s whole goal and metric for success is just not dying.  That’s ultimately his big reward at the end of most episodes when his schemes work out: the fact that he gets to spend another day in the muck and chill of the World War 1 trenches. 

It’s an incredibly sly twist on the necessity of keeping Blackadder from succeeding along with the sitcom idea of stability. It’s a running joke with sitcoms now that no matter the situation in an episode, things will go back to “normal” at the end of the episode. That the status quo remains enforced regardless of the zaniness or stakes of the days events. Blackadder Goes Forth turns this idea completely on its head with the status quo still be reasserted at the end of each adventure. 

Instead of a comforting return to normalcy, it’s a return to the horrific constant threat of death that is life in the trenches of World War 1. Each episode ends with the heroes’ victory of “you didn’t die today” being undercut by the return to a status quo that says “but there’s always tomorrow,” until the final episode where death at last got its due. 

That’s the other reason this season of Blackadder remains as popular and critically acclaimed as it is: the incredibly powerful final episode in which Blackadder and all of his companions finally go over the trenches and actually die in the barren fields of no man’s land. It’s an incredibly shocking turn to tragedy that catches viewers off guard even today. Even watching the show with full foreknowledge that it’s coming, you really aren’t prepared for the impact of emotion of the show’s final episode. Partially this is thanks to all the build up the show has had as the previous 5 episodes leading up to the finale. That had a number of close calls and very last-minute reprieves where our heroes narrowly avoided the end. 

Additionally, all the actors to a great job transitioning from their comedy personas to a more starkly dramatic performance, though Hugh Laurie is the highlight of the entire ending sequence. Throughout the entire show, his character has been a less powerful Melchett, a young upper-class volunteer who signed up with hopes for death and glory. He’s been the voice of mindless optimism no matter how adverse the situation might seem till here at the end where the weight of his situation finally comes through. It’s another moment that plays on the sitcom formula and our expectation. Characters like George aren’t supposed to feel scared; he’s supposed to be continually optimistic and held together no matter the situation, so seeing him admit his fear is a deeply moving and humanizing experience. 

Humanizing is the key to the finale and the key power of comedy within this context overall. In a dramatic story, we approach the characters at something of a distance. We assume that they can and probably will be killed, especially if it’s a story about war and the realities of life. In a comedy, however, that’s not the case. No one watches Blackadder or Seinfeld with the assumption these are characters that could be killed off at a moment’s notice. 

In effect, we assume the characters of a comedy are almost functionally immortal, hence why we’re so accepting of them surviving greater injuries and such; we know they’re not supposed to die. That assumption actually brings us much closer to comedic characters because, in so many ways, we don’t think we’re going to die either. 

We’re all fundamentally aware that our time is limited, but within every person, there’s the suspicion that we’re different. That somehow we won’t die; that we’ll get more time; that there’ll always be one more scheme, one more episode before the big finish. We see comedy characters the way we see ourselves in our most base elements, and this is the purest example of that.  

So, when we are confronted with these characters death, the inescapability and needlessness of it, we’re afforded no distance or safety. To accept that these characters, whose mortality is meant to be a reflection of our own, can be killed so meaninglessly is to accept the same about us. 


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