Tolkien biopic reportedly in development

Oh, and the Christmas Special can be seen here:

Good find Blue!  

The Spanish Infanta! Classic! (I don't mind  a bit of pathos, Petty, but some rollicking Classic silliness never goes astray - never! The Spanish Infanta is a Classic.

And, yes, the Black Adder was a different Black Adder each time - starting with  a silly pathetic one and in later ancestral forms a (generally) pathotic one. I found them all good but I do have to say the latter three seemed more predictable to me, with the Lords and Aristocrats lampooned quite stereotypically. Everyone was off the planet in the First Series. Very 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail-ish' in a way. Silly - yes - but very well put together, because silliness is the hardest form of humour to carry off in my opinion. Rah! Rah! First Series!

A special mention for the "Bob' episode in Series Two. The look on Edmund's face when he realizes he has such feelings for a... boy - when he's actually falling for a girl that he doesn't know is a girl --- oh the sexual confusion, poor man  -  brilliant! (Both pathetic and pathotic... and silly...  )  (The ending is a bit passé though, much as I love Rik!)

I think series 1 is the hardest to get into it, as its the least formulaic of them all- the others are in traditional sitcom territory, whereas the first series is as you say more out on the edge, where some things soar as genius and others not so much. Its brilliant, but its undeniably patchy too.

I wholeheartedly recommend it however, just not as an entry point for a new audience who might find series 1's charms harder to dig out.

I just assumed that in every incarnation he gradually moved up the feeding chain in increased cunning, but decreased down the feeding chain in terms of his social status. He was a Prince in medieval times but he was a complete plank, in the Elizabethan times he was a lord in the service of a Queen and cunning, in Georgian times he was merely a servant but incredibly cunning and devious, and in the great War he was just an officer under Melchett, and yet avoided certain Death through extreme cunning, until the bitter end where no amount of cunning could save him.

Ist series is my fave. Pathetic fellow he were! (Mainly for the Infanta)...

Pettytyrant101 wrote:Series 1 is like one long pilot, that has some good moments but didnt really work overall.

When it came back in series 2 they changed just about everything including all the main characters personalities and roles- and they struck gold and thats the format it keeps through to the end- so series 1 is a bit of an anomaly- its shot differently, its pretty loose and all over the place, and all the characters are different.

And as each series is self contained- each one is set in a different period in British history- you dont need to have seen series 1 to jump on at series 2. But series 3 and 4 although in different periods play of things established in the characters form 2 onwards. Series 1 is sort of off to the side completely on its own.

And there are no finer similes in the English language than those employed in Blackadder- if you enjoy language and the humour of it then Blackadder is an absolute gem.

I should maybe mention also the fantastic cast includes Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie as well as Rowan Atkinson in the lead role.

Thanks - I pulled my way through about half the first season and couldn't figure where all the accolades came from.  Somewhat enjoyable, but not the unadulterated genius I had been lead to believe.  BB's sample definitely shows the improvement.

But did their entire set (in series 2) consist of a closet? Never seen such a cramped throne room....

Edit: the best parts of series 1 do stick out as brilliant, it's just as Petty says rather uneven.  Sometimes the over the top silliness is, well, over the top.

when I watch it now I dont find it as funny as when it first came out, maybe tastes have changed or become more sophisticated, BA felt like an end of term school play in a lot of ways.

I think there is still a lot of comedy gold in Blackadder- particularly series 2,3 and especially 4- 4 is the pinnacle so far for me of pathos in tv comedy, and I have yet to see any better it.

"did their entire set (in series 2) consist of a closet? Never seen such a cramped throne room...."- Halfy

Series1 cost the BBC a fortune, it was shot on film, it was shot largely on location. It was expensive.
When they got the second series commissioned it was on the basis they make it on a shoe string or not all- I actually think the lack of locations, and the minimal space they had works for it not against it by forcing them to make more of the characters and dialogue.
Its a much more focused and tighter series than one was.

Did you watch all 4 series Halfy? I would say if not its really worth it, series two brings us the wonderful Queenie, and series 3 gives you Hugh Laurie doing one of the things he does best, playing a complete and utter vacant idiot- no one does it better!
And 4 gives us, well everything coming together in damn near perfection.

I only watched I think half of series 1. Maybe the whole thing if only 8 episodes. Didn't feel encouraged until now to watch more as I felt half of what I had seen to be tiresome.

Should have taken my advice Halfy and started at series 2. I feel series 1 is so different from the others in characters and tone and in how it was written (from sries2 onwards Ben Elton joined the writing team) that it can be watched as a curio separate from all the rest.

But I do urge you to not give up on it based on series 1- that would be like giving up on DS9 just because the first 2 seasons sucked and missing some of the best ST ever written in the remainder.

Its worth watching on, and if you really dont want to watch all of it then at least watch all of series 4. That series is probably why it lingers so long in the national psyche.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:

But I do urge you to not give up on it based on series 1- that would be like giving up on DS9 just because the first 2 seasons sucked and missing some of the best ST ever written in the remainder.

Indeed they did. It's still hard for me to forgive.   

Its worth watching on, and if you really dont want to watch all of it then at least watch all of series 4. That series is probably why it lingers so long in the national psyche.

Yes, 4 was an exceptional way to end the BA series. I'm sure it resonates more for Brits, but it still carries a punch over here, especially if you've got a connection to a World War.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:But I do urge you to not give up on it based on series 1- that would be like giving up on DS9 just because the first 2 seasons sucked and missing some of the best ST ever written in the remainder.

So are any of the ST series consistently good for their entire runs? I ask because I've been told by numerous people that the first three or four seasons of TNG are awful, so my dad and skipped them, and I've heard bad things about Voyager too. No one seems to even mention Enterprise or The Animated Series.

I guess maybe TOS was consistently good since it only ran for three seasons but is favorably remembered?

Eldorion wrote:
I guess maybe TOS was consistently good since it only ran for three seasons but is favorably remembered?

No TOS was far from consistently good, but at least it wasn't consistently bad. And it was original. When you're boldly going where no man has gone before, you're gonna make some false steps.

Edit:

Eldorion wrote:So are any of the ST series consistently good for their entire runs?

Short answer: no.

maybe TOS was consistently good- Eldo

Try watching Spock's Brain then saying that   

None were good right through, but the original was anything from ground breaking genius to awful right from the off.
TNG doesn't have a half decent episode for about a series and a half (with the weird one with two Picards), DS9 had I thought the best pilot of modern ST then was utter rubbish, where they didn't seem to know what it was supposed to be about for two series, then suddenly found its feet and its own voice.
Voyager I disliked from the word go and still disliked at the end. One good character, the Doctor (for some reason ST tends to write good doctors).
Enterprise was a bad idea badly executed. The pilot episode seems to think at certain points that was supposed to be a soft porn film.

Not seen enough of the animated series to judge it, but from the little I have seen, and judged as a Saturday morning US cartoon of the period it was ok.

It's generally accepted that the last year of the original series was below the first two, as Roddenberry withdrew direct artistic control in protest after the show was moved to the graveyard shift, and the budget was cut.

I didn't see TNG until later in its run when it had found its feet, and the later DS9 was allowed grittier writing after the death of Roddenberry, which I think is what improved it.  But the franchise lost its moorings after DS9.

David H wrote:

Pettytyrant101 wrote:
Its worth watching on, and if you really dont want to watch all of it then at least watch all of series 4. That series is probably why it lingers so long in the national psyche.

 Yes, 4 was an exceptional way to end the BA series.  I'm sure it resonates more for Brits, but it still carries a punch over here, especially if you've got a connection to a World War.

It's pretty poignant from a historical point of view too.



Which sould be applauded. Though it's still a comedy first and foremost. And as for comedy leading too actual societal change, I tend too remember the thing Peter Cook used to say about the great effect all those 1930s cabaret clubs in Berlin had in stopping the rise of the Nazis.

I've tried watching parts of Blackadder Goes Forth because I've heard about how amazing and emotional it is, but the fucking laugh track ruins it for me every time.

Spoiler:

Having the same kind of laugh track as every other sitcom in existence destroys any sort of tragicomic and/or poignant mood for me.

Spoilers Eldo-

Spoiler:

I wouldn't know since I had heard all about the series before ever trying to watch it. I'll readily admit that I just hate laugh tracks in general, but I don't really see how that uncertainty would be lacking without the laugh track, since everyone would still have known it was a sitcom.

Laughter tracks are common in sitcoms- im not a fan of them myself but I can usually tune them out.

Spoiler:

I understood what you meant.  Most of my favorite sitcoms were animated and fairly recent, and the laugh track was never really popular with Simpsons-imitators.  I'm struggling to remember if any of the live-action sitcoms I've seen regularly had laugh-tracks.  I think they did, but I just didn't find any of them to be all that memorable to begin with.  The ones that I do really like, such as Arrested Development, which is also recent, tend to be laugh track-free.  Perhaps it's going out of style?

I understood what you meant.- Eldo

Yet you have not put it in spoilers still?   

In the old days of small black-and-white TV's with weak signals, snowy pictures and bad sound, the laugh track was essentia, because you might be missing half of what was said. Same with the vaudeville style deliveries. It was all acted over-the-top so that it could be understood in the cheap seats.

I Love Lucy set the standard, and sitcoms followed the recipe for decades. I guess I got desensitized to laugh tracks as a kid, but they do seem pretty obnoxious now, if I stop and listen to them.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:I understood what you meant.- Eldo

Yet you have not put it in spoilers still?   

I described the ending of the final episode in my first post on this matter, but if you want I'll edit some spoiler tags into that. Although the show is a quarter of a century old.