Blackadder's Christmas Carol (1988)

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General		Extras
Category	Comedy	None
Rating
Year Of Production	1988
Running Time	43:13
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Richard Boden
Studio Distributor	Roadshow Home Entertainment	Starring	Rowan Atkinson Tony Robinson Robbie Coltrane Miranda Richardson
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$22.95	Music	None Given

    For those of you who are fans of the BlackAdder series you might want to simply skip to the transfer section since nothing in the synopsis will be unknown. This 45 minute episode of BlackAdder was made in 1988 and has been shown multiple times on TV. If you've never heard of BlackAdder (God forbid), then this may be of some minor help in deciding whether or not to make a Christmas gift out of this DVD. For everyone else, you'll probably want to buy this to take another step closer to completing the collection.

   It's Christmas eve and Ebenezer Blackadder (Rowan Atkinson), the proprietor of a small moustache shop in London, and the kindest man in England, is settling up his books and looking forward to another Christmas dinner with his old friend and compatriot Mr Baldrick (Tony Robinson), a rather scruffy-looking type who lives with him. Mr Blackadder though, unlike some of his more illustrious ancestors is a marshmallow of a man with all the backbone of a jellyfish as evidenced by the collection of reprobates that come to his humble store and rip him off of not only his money but his meagre Christmas presents and repast.

   First to take advantage of him is Mrs Scratchitt (Pauline Melville), the match seller, who charges him £17 for 17 lousy matches leaving him with 1 shiny penny. A street urchin begs the penny off him and hops down to the local gin shop. Next, his niece Millicent (Nicola Bryant) just wanders past and pinches all his presents and Beadle (Denis Lill) and his Enormous Orphans (David Nunn, David Barber, Erkan Mustafa) pinch his nuts. A poorly disguised Queen Victoria (Miriam Margoyles) and Prince Albert (Jim Broadbent) take his pitiful turkey leaving him with nothing but a fire and Baldrick for company. Just before retiring to bed, Baldrick tells him of a ghost who's come knocking for him who turns out to be the Spirit of Christmas who then regales Blackadder with tales of his less-than-illustrious predecessors and his future selves. Naturally, he stuffs it up and suddenly Blackadder realises that being bad is a lot better than being good and you end up saving the universe to boot.

   With all four series now out on single disc or available in a boxed set, possibly this means that the other single episodes (such as Blackadder Back and Forth) are set for their own release. This one is probably strictly for the fans.

Video

    Parts of this disc can be described as just slightly better than VHS although there are some decent moments scattered throughout. For lovers of high quality DVDs this isn't one, but I doubt we'll see much better on offer anytime soon and it isn't that bad, it's just not that good.

    Originally made for TV, this is presented in 1.33:1 and not 16x9 enhanced as was first transmitted.

    The picture is very much on the soft side with plenty of edge enhancement (eg: 5:32 along Blackadder's sleeve) on show throughout. Shadow detail is minimal at best with plenty of solid backgrounds where detail may once have been evident, although the sets are fairly simplistic for the most part. Grain is omnipresent but not totally disruptive. As the disc progresses, the grain does lessen and there is a slight improvement in the overall picture quality, but it isn't enough to make a huge difference. Low level noise was not noted, although it was hard to tell in some scenes.

    The best you can say for the colour is that it is washed out. Whites are cream, skin tones too dark, browns are murky and from time to time there is a real video feel to it. Colour bleed can be detected on occasion (3:57 on tree ornaments and the end titles at 42:26) but chroma noise wasn't.

    Surprisingly, no film artefacts were noticed. That isn't to say there weren't any, just that they weren't obvious. Moiré artefacts can be seen (eg: 2:08 on striped bag) along with pixelization (2:49 on Blackadder's shirt and 4:36 on Prince Albert's waistcoat). Aliasing doesn't get a look in although there is some shimmering occasionally, but it is too light to be worried about. One other problem was noticed. At 35:07 the bottom third of the screen can clearly be seen as being darker than the top two thirds with a line delineating the difference.

    The subtitles are in an italic font in the bottom sixth of the screen. They don't match the spoken word exactly but are reasonable without being precise.

   This is a single layered disc.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    There is only one soundtrack on this disc; English Dolby Digital 2.0 with a bitrate of 192 kilobits per second. Voices and dialogue were strictly centre channel fare with the laugh track and the odd incidental noise (ringing bell, opening of a door, etc) coming from the front channels. There isn't much else to say except the sound was well equalised in terms of level and there were no detectable pops or crackles making for a very clean transfer to disc.

    The dialogue was everything you'd expect; clean, clear and precise, and no syncing errors were noted.

    The accompanying music is the same as used in the TV series.

    There was no surround nor subwoofer activity detected on this disc.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    There is no listed Region 1 individual release of this disc, but it is available in a box set including all four series, extra episodes and some additional extras.

    The series is long over but the first of the extra episodes is finally being released on DVD.

    The video is okay, but the first fifteen to twenty minutes is not much better than video quality. After this, it gets a little better overall.

    The audio is serviceable and nothing more.

    There are no extras on this disc.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall