Tony Robinson talks to his old friend and collaborator, screenwriter Richard Curtis in a special episode of Cunningcast dedicated to the lost Blackadder pilot.
They share memories and secrets of making Blackadder from the early years to how it all ended. Along the way, Richard and Tony discuss Richard’s comedy roots and how he became a leading screenwriter: meeting Rowan Atkinson at Oxford Uni, working on Not The Nine O’Clock News, the influence of Fawlty Towers and plans for a Blackadder series set in the 1960s that never happened.
The pair also read lines from the Blackadder pilot script where they discover where Baldrick’s ‘cunning plan’ catchphrase comes from.
Talking about Blackadder, Richard says: “I think that the process, which I found so hard of basically the actors not rehearsing, just simply rewriting and arguing about the script for five days a week, did make it very dense. And therefore, I think that it has a richness to it, which means that when people return to it, there’s still lots going on, and I think we caught a lot of people in their performing prime.”
Richard was Blackadder’s mastermind and writer, alongside Ben Elton. He’s one of Britain’s most successful screenwriters and producers, with credits including Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, Mr Bean, The Vicar of Dibley, Love Actually, Bridget Jones’s Diary and Yesterday. He’s also the co-founder of Comic Relief.
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