Blackadder: Back & Forth (1999)

That was an excellent one.

Thanks for the memories!

Brilliant and touching

it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.

As with any TV reunion show this was going to get a mixed reception. The good news is that what we have here is another cracking entry to the saga of the Blackadders. The bad news is that we probably didn't need it.Edmund tricks Elizabeth, Melchett, George and Darling (whatever happened to Percy?) with a fake time machine, built by Baldrick, to celebrate the millennium. This is Blackadder so of course it all goes horribly wrong when it actually works. What follows is a time-hopping adventure that sees our antiheroes on a mad dash back and forth through time until they eventually get back to the present. In France-occupied Britain. The series never wasted an opportunity to insult the french, and it does so again here (Garlic Pudding?!) with the same no-holds-barred approach as ever.We get to see more new Darlings, which is welcome since that was lacking before, like the frenchman Duc De Darling at the battle of Waterloo a setting that gives us the chance to have Stephen Fry back as the (toned down) Wellington - a nice inclusion from the end of BA3.It's all a bit too silly though. For instance in one scene the only joke is seeing Stephen Fry speak Latin without trousers (because Fry is gay so he must dress like that LOL) and at one point Baldrick kills an entire species with his underpants. Also lacking is he opportunity to revisit old settings. We only get to see the Elizabethan Court, but it's a different set and is an advert for polo mints & Tesco clubcard and all Nurse Bernard does is grin inanely. I know that's all she ever did before, but couldn't she have at least ONE line? That's not too much to ask is it? Apparently it is.Still, can't really complain. This still balances out as a passable episode. It's just a shame that the potential isn't quite fulfilled. This should have been longer, so as to draw more upon the ideas in play here, because then it would've been great. If you want a good Blackadder special try the Christmas episode or comic relief short instead.

When the Millennium was coming close they built a special building in London called the Millennium Dome, they made this special film to be played in the cinema of the Dome. Richard Curtis and Ben Elton's wonderful comedy sitcom characters have returned after ten years to do a special final edition to the saga (the final member of the Blackadder family, to date). Rowan Atkinson as Lord Edmund Blackadder and his friends George (Hugh Laurie), Melchett (Stephen Fry), Darling (Tim McInnerny) and Lady Elizabeth (Miranda Richardson) sit down to dinner to celebrate the New Year, new Century and Millennium. The very good Baldrick (Tony Robinson) is also there providing a disgusting dinner. Blackadder then tells his chums he has made a time machine, he shows them and he bets them £10,000 each that he can time travel and bring back historical items. They all except the bet and ask for separate items. It's after Baldrick and Blackadder get into the machine and pull a lever that they do actually time travel, but it was meant to be a prank! Also starring Rik Mayall as Robin Hood (Woof!), Colin Firth as William Shakespeare, Kate Moss as Maid Marian and Patsy Byrne as Nursie. It was nominated the BAFTA Situation Comedy Award. Edmund Blackadder was number 3 on The 100 Greatest TV Characters, and he was number 3 on The World's Greatest Comedy Characters. Very good!

This short reformation of the Blackadder gang came ten years after the final series, and was put together to run in the ill-fated Millennium Dome, that Greenwich white elephant opened to celebrate the arrival of the 21st century.Blackadder has built a 'time machine' which he has put together to impress his appalling dinner guests. Taking Baldrick with him he plans to bring back an array of disgusting items to prove he's been away - of course, it is initially a scam, but ...Through their time travel, our heroes manage to change the course of history in more than one epoch - Edmund steals Maid Marian from Robin Hood (an OTT Rik Mayall with more than a whiff of Flashheart about him); he convinces Shakespeare - a morose Colin Firth - not to be a writer (and punches him for all the boring plays he wrote); he causes Napoleon to have slightly different fortunes than history dictated (Napoleon played by the stage actor Simon Russell Beale); and so on.All the usual cast are back - alongside Rowan Atkinson and Tony Robinson there's Miranda Richardson, Stephen Fry, Tim McInnerny, and Hugh Laurie. There are in-jokes, too - Jennie Bond appears in her guise as Royal Reporter, but in a different era (just as Vincent Hanna did election reporting for Baldrick v William Pitt the Even Younger in Blackadder the Third).Overall, though, this short episode is a bit sparse on ideas, and feels strained. After the long wait, and the long build-up, it was just disappointing when it finally appeared.

I just wanted to add a little comment: This film was actually originally made to be shown in The Millennium Dome in London. This is the reason that the film is based around the millennium fever that hit much of the population of the western world around the end of the last century!! It is not much of a valuable addition to any Blackadder collection, except that it is a part of history, in it's own little way.I watched it in the Millennium Dome, and for that reason was impressed with it, whilst being greatly disappointed at the same time.