connie booth

When I was a kid, I remember seeing episodes of a couple of strange British shows on my local PBS affiliate in Rochester, NY. I never caught them regularly, not even sure when they aired, but I remember one of them was a peculiar little period piece with some funny gags, and a storyline I never completely grasped.

I learned later this first show was the classic Blackadder series with Rowan Atkinson, and the reason the storylines never made sense from show to show is that there are four seasons of the show, all taking place in a different historical period. I saw them out of order, and mostly caught the first season.

Watching the new Black Adder Remastered - The Ultimate Edition DVD set from BBC America (video and audio both remastered), it's clear the best way to watch Blackadder is to at least watch each series in order. And if you can watch the whole run in order, so much the better. From the first series set in the Dark Ages to the last set in World War I (Blackadder Goes Forth), Atkinson's character, Blackadder, remains a scheming coward. But he changes, too.

John Cleese, Connie Booth, Prunella Scales and Andrew Sachs reunited for the filming of a Fawlty Towers reunion. At first I'd hoped it was new material, but sadly it was more of a retrospective than an actual new episode. Mind you, it would be pretty unique to wait thirty years to film the third season of a show.

There have been attempts to make an American version of Fawlty Towers, starring such names as the recently departed Bea Arthur and John Larroquette. Somehow, they never managed to equal the brilliant writing of the original.