BBC series’ Christmas special ‘too offensive to be made’
A BBC Christmas special script by Richard Curtis that was scrapped for being too offensive is on sale for £10,000
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Rowan Atkinson as Sir Edmund Blackadder, centre, and Tony Robinson as Baldrick (Image: BBC)
A Blackadder script that was deemed ‘too offensive’ to be aired is now up for sale at a price of £10,000.
The sitcom, led by Rowan Atkinson, ran for four series on BBC One in the 1980s with a very different Christmas special initially planned for 1988 before Blackadder’s Christmas Carol came along.
The discarded episode, titled Blackadder in Bethlehem, was written by Richard Curtis but was ultimately shelved due to concerns it would cause too much offence, as explained by the Love Actually writer in a note accompanying the script.
Instead, Curtis and co-writer Ben Elton chose to develop a new concept, which eventually became Blackadder’s Christmas Carol. Curtis confessed that the script, which he described as ‘a strange mixture of Fawlty Towers and Life of Brian’, was never even shared with Elton before being cast aside.
Reflecting on their final product, Blackadder’s Christmas Carol, Elton revealed in his memoir What Have I Done? that it was his “least happy memory on the Adder”.
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Blackadder was scrapped by the BBC (Image: Daily Mirror)
Despite his fondness for the script he and Curtis created, he felt that “about 50 per cent of it had been messed up in the rehearsal room… It could have been so much better.”
Blackadder in Bethlehem would have seen Johnny English star Rowan Atkinson reprising his role as the eponymous character, alongside Tony Robinson as Baldrick.
In this episode, Blackadder was envisioned as a Basil Fawlty-like innkeeper in Bethlehem, bossing around his servant Baldwick, when a young couple – Mary and Joseph – arrive at their door.
After being evicted from his usual quarters to make room for the couple, Blackadder threatens to retaliate. In one scene, Baldrick’s tongue is threatened with scissors as a motley crew of shepherds, kings and a Roman – who requests strippers, lion tamers and magicians – descend upon the inn.
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Actress Miranda Richardson as Queen Elizabeth I in Blackadder(Image: Daily Record)
One humorous moment involves Joseph considering ‘Jesus’ as a potential name for a boy after misinterpreting Baldrick’s sneeze (’tishoo’), while another scene features a talking turkey discovering it’s on the dinner menu.
Whether this Christmas special was too irreverent for 1980s audiences remains unknown, but whoever acquires the original script can enjoy envisioning it on screen or stage.
An excerpt from the script was published in Jem Roberts’s 2012 book The True History of the Blackadder. Richard Curtis, writer of Four Weddings and a Funeral, noted: “Now that the Blackadder series has definitely and definitively come to an end, there’s no harm in people reading it – if only to see just how far things used to improve between first draft and recording.”
The sale will benefit children’s education charity Theirworld, and the buyer will also receive handwritten notes from the filming of the renowned episode Blackadder Goes Forth: Corporal Punishment.
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The Blackadder script is up for sale(Image: Daily Mirror)
Co-created by Rowan Atkinson and Richard Curtis, the historical comedy Blackadder became a cultural sensation, producing 24 episodes over six years, along with four specials, the last of which aired in 1999. Each series of the sitcom was set in different historical periods, including the First World War and the reign of Queen Elizabeth I.
Last December, Blackadder fans were given some tantalising news during an interview with Metro. Richard sparked fresh hope by hinting at a potential revival of some sort in the pipeline.
“Well, oddly, Rowan and I have a plan for something we might do which would just be a bit of fun sometime in the next few years,” he revealed. “I’d love to work with Rowan one more time on something.”
SOURCE: WALESONLINE