OK, so I may once have complained about
US-Centricness on Everything but that
doesn't mean I think we should
go all the way in the other direction and
produce writeups that are meaningless to those not raised on
Elton/
Atkinson
comedy.
Baldrick is a character from the hugely popular (in Britain at least) BBC
television comedy series, "Blackadder". Played by Tony Robinson, in the
first Blackadder series (set in Medieval England), Baldrick was the servant
of Prince Edmund Blackadder. Despite being regarded as something lower down on
the evolutionary scale than a tapeworm, the Baldrick of these programmes
was blessed with an ability for remarkable insight into complicated
situations; an ability that saved his master's life on more than one
occasion.
In later series of Blackadder, Baldrick's character shifted slightly. He was made
into a straightforward receptacle for all the one-liners and slapstick
from Blackadder, whose social standing slipped as the centuries passed:
from a prince, to a courtier to Queen Elizabeth, to the Prince Regent's
butler and finally to a mere captain in the trenches of Flanders. No matter
how low things got for Blackadder, however, there was always a Baldrick
lurking somewhere further down the evolutionary tree, and always in Blackadder's
service.
The Baldrick of Blackadder series 2 and 3 was a stereotypical village idiot;
rarely capable of showing any flashes of insight and concerned with little more
than where his next turnip was coming from. In the 4th series, Blackadder Goes Forth,
something of the original Baldrick shines through: for once, some of his
cunning plans could actually prove to be quite useful.
Tony Robinson's genius at playing the character of Baldrick has been at
least as much the reason behind the success of Blackadder as that of Rowan
Atkinson. The small, stupid but ultimately big-hearted fool that he turned
Baldrick into helped make the concept an instant classic, and most of the
truly great Blackadder moments involve him in some way or other.