Blackadder

Blackadder (1986)

11 corrected entries in season 2

(7 votes)

Season 2 generally

Corrected entry: The episode "Bells" and the episode "Head" appear to be inversed in their order - Lord Percy has a beard at the beginning of "Bells," and shaves it off. However, in "Head," he's got it back. In all of the other episodes, he has no beard. Also, the song at the end of "Head" mentions Lord Blackadder's origins (it mentions Edmund's great-grandfather), which makes it more a follow-on from the 1st series.

Correction: Very much your opinion though. The episodes do not necessarily follow directly on from one another (remember, due to the later episode Potato, the beginning and end of the series are separated by several years), giving a fashion follower like Lord Percy plenty of time to grow a beard and shave it off again. These episodes have not been re-ordered on the subsequent DVD releases, or in the book 'Blackadder: The Whole Damn Dynasty' (written by the show's writers Richard Curtis, Ben Elton and John Lloyd), as they surely would have had it been a broadcast error. It must therefore be assumed to be intentional on the part of the makers and not a mistake. Equally, the song only mentions Edmund's ancestor because it fits vaguely in with the idea of Blackadder achieving a little bit of power again, and would have fitted anywhere in the series.

umathegreatstationarybear

Chains - S2-E6

Corrected entry: Queen Elizabeth asks Percy "play awhile, to calm my spirits" and he starts singing clapping games and nursery rhymes. One of these is "Ring o' ring o' roses", a song which was not written until the late 1800's (and which, contrary to urban legend, has nothing to do with the bubonic plague - see http://www.snopes.com/language/literary/rosie.htm for more detail).

Correction: This is one of the most frequently submitted (& also frequently corrected) mistakes on the whole site. The programme is written and performed in contemporary English, using language that the general public will understand. Ben Elton & Richard Curtis are highly intelligent well educated men and it is very unlikely that they were unaware of this anachronism (they used 'Happy Birthday' at a different point in the series, for which royalties had to be paid). I think they should be given the benefit of the doubt on this one.

Money - S2-E4

Corrected entry: When Edmund realises he can't pay the bishop his debt and returns home after giving his £85 to the queen from losing his bet. Baldrick gives Edmund a drink which spills over his right leg, which no one seems to notice.

Correction: Er, so? How is spilling your drink a mistake? Edmund's got bigger things to worry about - his impending death for one - than a bit of damp on his leg.

umathegreatstationarybear

Beer - S2-E5

Corrected entry: In the episode "Beer", set in the 1560s, the "Happy Birthday" song is sung by several characters. This song was not written until 1893 by two American school teachers, copyrighted in 1935. Neither is the song in the public domain. It still earns significant fees to the copyright holders each time it is recorded for sale, i.e. in a movie or on television. In most of the episodes, the various historical inaccuracies are intentional. This one, though, appears to have been an accident, a genuine mistake on the part of the writers. It should be noted that unintentional historical errors are very rare in Blackadder, "unintentional" being the key word.

tromatic

Correction: There is no way this mistake could have been overlooked in the production process. For starters the producers would have had to pay the royalties. This is entirely a deliberate gag by the writers.

Head - S2-E2

Corrected entry: Nursey says that ointment is what's needed when your head's been cut off and that's what she used with Queenie's "sister Mary when they done her." Mary, Queen of Scots, was the only close relative of Elizabeth that was beheaded and called Mary but she was a cousin. Elizabeth's half-sister Mary was not beheaded, she was queen (as Mary I) before Elizabeth and died of influenza and cancer. Also, Mary was beheaded in 1587 when Elizabeth was 54, Miranda Richardson hardly seems 54 and in "Potato," Sir Walter Raleigh has just returned from America and mentions that he left Plymouth in spring of 1552 so Mary is over thirty years away from her beheading.

Correction: Nursey is a complete barmpot who is prone to talking absolute nonsense.

Beer - S2-E5

Corrected entry: I know Percy's not that bright, but he adds "Cardinal Wolsey" to the list of party guests. Given that Wolsey died in 1530, and Queen Elizabeth ruled from 1558 onwards (she wasn't even born until 1533), he must have been dead for at least 28 years by this point (even in the Blackadder world of history). Obviously it's done for the joke, but it's still wrong.

He's My Brother

Correction: A self-correcting mistake. Percy is an idiot. He said the first name that came into his head without stopping to realise Wolsey is dead.

Chains - S2-E6

Corrected entry: How does the Spanish guard know that Blackadder gets the charades clues wrong at first, and then starts getting them right? He doesn't speak any English and would have no idea whether he was making the right connections or not.

Correction: Many people can understand a language far better than they can speak it - the guard is presumably able to understand enough to know when Blackadder's along the right lines (although it isn't good enough to understand Blackadder's rather involved insults).

Tailkinker

Head - S2-E2

Corrected entry: One of my favorite lines is when Blackadder refers to himself as "The new minister of religious genocide". However, the word "genocide" didn't appear until around the mid-1940's when Raphael Lemkin invented it specifically to describe the events witnessed in the Holocaust.

Correction: 'Blackadder' is written and performed in contemporary English. This is a straightforward film convention, not an error. Only a handful of academics would understand a television show shot in genuine Elizabethan English.

Season 2 generally

Corrected entry: Blackadder's house is confusing, particularly the "front" room we spend the series in. In "Potato", Blackadder fires an arrow down on the crowd, and calls down, showing that that room is on the second floor. In "Beer", this room leads into the corridor (which is level with the room), and the front door is level with the street, as shown by the Puritans entering.

Correction: The street that the front door opens out onto need not be at the same level as the street outside the window. The house could be built on the side of a hill so the streets might not be at the same height.

Bells - S2-E1

Corrected entry: When Edmund goes to see the wise woman, she advises that one option to get out of his predicament would be to "kill Bob". He hasn't told her Bob's name at this point, only that he is in love with his manservant. Although the "wise woman" is a crone and could be thought to have insight of this nature, she's portrayed as far too rubbish.

Eliza

Correction: The first thing she says to him is "Hail Edmund, Lord of Adders Black", she couldn't know who he was since she's a recluse and Edmund tells Baldrick that he'd rather trust Dr Leech then some old crone - so she has some ability in the mystical to know his name.

Chains - S2-E6

Corrected entry: How on earth did Edmund know that the party was going to be a fancy dress party? Queenie, Nursey, Baldrick and Percy didn't discuss it until after Queenie wrote to Edmund to tell him that they were going to spend the money on a party so Edmund couldn't have told Prince Ludwig what to go as.

Correction: When Edmund recounts his words to Prince Ludwig they're actually along the lines of 'IF they have a fancy dress party then Nursie always goes as a cow'. Edmund didn't know for certain that the party was fancy dress he was just preparing for that eventuality so they'd still be able to tell who Ludwig was.

More mistakes in Blackadder

Plan B: Corporal Punishment - S4-E2

Blackadder: I remember Massingbird's most famous case - the Case of the Bloody Knife. A man was found next to a murdered body. He had the knife in his hand, thirteen witnesses had seen him stab the victim and when the police arrived he said 'I'm glad I killed the bastard.' Massingbird not only got him off, he got hom knighted in the New Year's Honours list, and the relatives of the victim had to pay to get the blood washed out of his jacket.

More quotes from Blackadder
More trivia for Blackadder

Answer: According to the IMDB.com's quote page for Blackadder The Third, it's "Aahhhhh. Hot potato, orchestra stalls, Puck will make amends. Owwwwww."

Gary O'Reilly

More questions & answers from Blackadder

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