Blackadder

Blackadder is a series of four period British sitcoms - The Black Adder, Blackadder II, Blackadder the Third and Blackadder Goes Forth - plus several one-off instalments, which originally aired on BBC1 from 1983 to 1989. All television episodes starred Rowan Atkinson as the antihero Edmund Blackadder and Tony Robinson as Blackadder's dogsbody, Baldrick. Each series was set in a different historical period, with the two protagonists accompanied by different characters, though several reappear in one series or another, e.g., Tim McInnerny as Percy and Darling, Stephen Fry as Melchett, and Hugh Laurie as George.

The first series was written by Richard Curtis and Atkinson, while the subsequent three series were written by Curtis and Ben Elton. All four series were produced by John Lloyd. In 2000, Blackadder Goes Forth ranked at 16 in the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes, a list created by the British Film Institute. In a 2001 poll by Channel 4, Edmund Blackadder was ranked third on their list of the 100 Greatest TV Characters. In the 2004 TV poll to find Britain's Best Sitcom, Blackadder (all four series combined) was voted the second-best British sitcom of all time, topped by Only Fools and Horses. It was also ranked as the ninth-best TV show of all time by Empire magazine in 2009. Atkinson said Blackadder is "the thing he found the least stressful" to do.