Black Adder V - Back and Forth

The actual content itself is about 31 minutes long, with an 18 minute long "Baldrick's Diary" (Which is really a making-of featurette), some witty "Who's who in Blackadder" Bios narrated by Actor Tony Robinson, and 5 minutes of Historical tidbits touching on spots visited by Blackadder & Baldrick during the "Film", also narrated by Robinson. There's also some trailers for other BBC DVD's.

The Film itself is more like an episode of the series writ somewhat larger; A modern-day Blackadder and his manservent Baldrick use a home-made time machine to visit various spots in history. The usual suspects return, including Hugh Laurie, Stephen Fry, and Miranda Richardson. There were a few chuckles, but no real laughs until the end-credits song. Hardly worth the price, especially since the description on the box seems to imply that the actual movie is an hour long, not that EVERTHING on the disc equals an hour. Blackadder completists will certainly buy it, and enjoy it, but it should have had either more content or a lower price point....


Not the Place to Begin With Black Adder   October 26, 2002
Michael Weber (Atlanta)
7 out of 8 found this review helpful

While a total stranger to the Black Adder corpus can appreciate it, a lot of this lovely little poison valentine's fun comes from being familiar with the setup and the characters so that one can ALMOST predict the next line or situation... and then being delighted when the writers and cast give it some twist you hadn't predicted.

I must agree with another reviewer that the return to the court of Elizabeth I really doesn't work; it does indeed seem forced as if the actors no longer inhabit the characters, but rather are pretending to be their younger selves inhabiting the characters. (Does that make sense?)

On the other hand, one of the funniest sequences in the production is in the Elizabethean time frame but without any of the series regulars save Blackadder himself, meeting up with Shakespeare, getting his autograph and then... Well, it's Very Funny. Even funnier if you thought Branagh's uncut "Hamlet" was a touch long.

The Waterloo sequence is lovely, with a neat little "Wizard of Oz" reference.

And, of course, the ending(s) -- particularly the end ending,a it were -- an absolute delight for the Black Adder fan, with, of course, an appropriate version of the theme song vocal for the end credits.

The "extras" on the disc, though a bit sparse, are appreciated, including a short "making of" documentary piece, with the writer director and actors all expressing themselves with wonderful clarity, and also including a couple of bits that were (mostly for the better, i think, funny as they are) edited out of the episode.

ALso under the "Special Features" menu are cast biographies, recited, in character, by "Baldrick". Unfortunately (and i don't know if it's a defect in the disc, itself, or in my APEX DVD player with the hacked firmware, or a combination), after the first few bios have played, the last few syllables or words of each bio were cut off as it skipped to the next.