Friday Funny — Baldrick’s cunning plan to survive WWI
Photo: BBC
What makes Blackadder Goes Forth an instant classic (ok, besides the writing and the acting) is the fact that not only does it include Rowan Atkinson and Tony Robinson as Edmund Blackadder and Baldrick, but it also features the return of the greatness of Hugh Laurie as Lieutenant George, Stephen Fry as General Melchett, Tim McInnerny as Captain Kevin Darling and Miranda Richardson as the sweet-natured Nurse Mary Fletcher-Brown.
The fourth and final series (insert sad face here) of the classic British comedy, Blackadder, is set in 1917 in the trenches on the Western Front. Blackadder has one goal and one goal only – to avoid being killed. In “Captain Cook”, the first episode in Blackadder IV, Baldrick has the same goal…and, lucky for him and all of us, he has a cunning plan as to how to make this goal a reality.
Just in case you need a transcript of this for later use…
Blackadder:
Baldrick, what are you doing out there?
Baldrick:
I’m carving something on this bullet, sir.
Blackadder:
What are you carving?
Baldrick:
I’m carving “Baldrick”, sir!
Blackadder:
Why?
Baldrick:
It’s part of a cunning plan, actually!
Blackadder:
Of course it is.
Baldrick:
You know how they say that somewhere there’s a bullet with your name on it?
Blackadder:
[haltingly] Yyyyyyyyes…?
Baldrick:
Well, I thought that if I owned the bullet with my name on it, I’ll never get hit by it! Cause I’ll never shoot myself…
Blackadder:
Oh, shame!
Baldrick:
… and the chances of there being two bullet with my name are very small indeed!
Blackadder:
Yes, it’s not the only thing around here that’s “very small indeed”. Your brain, for example. Is so minute, Baldrick, that if a hungry cannibal cracked your head open, there wouldn’t be enough to cover a small water biscuit.
In: Comedy
