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Eagerly anticipating this week ... (15-24)
John Crowley's We Live in Time (2024)

1/17/2014

Blackadder the Third - season 3 (1987) - The royal sillines reaches its peak in fun and wits



Rowan Atkinson, once again, as Blackadder

QUICK REVIEW:

At this the third season in the historical, - although hoax-historical as well, - BBC sitcom, we have moved forward to 1760, where, once again, another Blackadder descendant, Edmund, is serving a British ruler; the uncannily inane prince of Wales, who is played to hysterical amusement by the then very facially vivacious Hugh Laurie (House M.D. (2004-12)).
Besides him and Blackadder, who is again played by the masterful Rowan Atkinson (Bean (1997)), season 3 only has two other regular characters; butler Edmund's helper Baldrick (Tony Robinson (Big Top (2009)) also does splendidly) and Mrs. Miggins, a coffee-shopkeeper.
It does the show well that it has rid itself of the unfunny ladies of the second season. The episodes also seem less vulgar and with greater focus on the lingual ingenuities, which sometimes threaten to totally run away with the show, but the fun during these creativities is constant.
The plots often drone over monetary problems and the incompetence of Baldrick and the prince of Wales. In Ink and Incapability, (all the titles are concocted as amusing word-plays that comment on the plots), Edmund is forced to try to write a dictionary. In the season's last episode, Duel and Duality, both Frenchmen, actors and Scots (again) are duly ridiculed, as Atkinson plays a double-role as Blackadder's cousin McAdder from the highlands. - Magnificent!
SPOILER At the very end, the prince dies in a duel, and Edmund dabbles himself to the much-coveted title.
This is the most down-toned and best season in the series.

Related reviews:

Rowan Atkinson: Bean/Bean: The Ultimate Disaster Movie/Bean: The Movie (1997) or, A Bean in America
Black-Adder II (1986) season 2 - More historic, English tomfooleries from BBC
The Black Adder - season 1 (1983) - Historic fooleries with Rowan Atkinson and co.

Watch a funny, 3-minute sample from the 3rd series here

Do you agree that this is the best season of Blackadder?
Any other British sitcoms that are a barrel of laugh?

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