TV

Blackadder: The Lost Pilot

I think I was expecting the first half of this to be some fluff to pad it to an hour, but it’s a surprisingly good little documentary, both as a history of the pilot and how it was transformed into the series, and as analysis of what does and doesn’t work, etc. Such a shame they ballsed up the rights (or whatever happened) and couldn’t include it on the complete series Blu-ray.

As for the pilot itself, it’s kind of bizarre how much it’s like series 2, considering how much series 1 isn’t like series 2. It’s as if someone saw the pilot and said, “that doesn’t quite work, let’s change it up,” then it took them an entire produced and broadcast series to realise those changes made it worse, before they went back to the original ideas and discovered, actually, they were perfection.

The pilot was also reworked into what’s probably the best episode of series 1, but I’d argue this actually does the same stuff better; partly because of the tone, partly thanks to some surprisingly elaborate bits of choreography (the play that turns into a farce and a climactic sword duel) which are a lot of fun.