Black Adder, The: Historic First Series (Remastered) (1983)

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General		Extras
Category	Comedy	None
Rating
Year Of Production	1983
Running Time	194:38 (Case: 190)
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Martin Shardlow
Studio Distributor	Roadshow Home Entertainment	Starring	Rowan Atkinson Tony Robinson Brian Blessed Tim McInnerny Elspet Gray Robert East
Case	Soft Brackley-Transp
RPI	$34.95	Music	Howard Goodall

    The Black Adder is another entry in the BBC's archives of television shows that should have been recorded and treated with a great deal more care than what they have received over time. Series One in particular was an excellent comedy with all of the right elements in place, although the comedic value tends to wear off with repeated viewings. The six episodes are all set in England during the late fifteenth century, or the time known as the War Of The Roses, and no stone is left unturned in picking the accepted conception of Medieval Europe's history apart. A total of six episodes are presented on this disc:

• The Foretelling (33:30)
  This episode explains exactly where Prince Edmund Blackadder (Rowan Atkinson) fits into the British monarchy, and how Richard IV (Brian Blessed) became the King. This particular episode is particularly hilarious because of its explanation of how Richard III (Peter Cook) died in battle on the fields of Bosworth.
• Born To Be King (33:32)
  Richard IV departs the castle on a crusade against the Turks, much to the relief of the Queen (Elspet Gray). Prince Harry (Robert East) is left to rule as Regent in his stead, while Baldrick (Tony Robinson) and Lord Percy (Tim McInnerny) give Edmund an idea that may unseat Harry from the throne. King Richard's best friend, Dougal McAngus (Alex Norton), drops around for a visit.
• The Archbishop (32:36)
  The battle between the royal family and the church for land is in full swing, with Lords dying, and having King Richard trying to talk them into leaving their lands to him, while the Archbishop uses the old fire and brimstone routine on them. Naturally, Archbishops are being killed left and right, and speculation begins about who the newest Archbishop will be.
• The Queen Of Spain's Beard (33:49)
  Marriages between Lords of the British court and royalty from other lands are the big thing in Europe at the moment. With Prince Harry married to a list of Princesses that reads like a shopping list, King Richard IV decides to marry off Edmund to the Princess Maria of Spain (Miriam Margoyles). In my ever so humble opinion, this is the weakest episode of this series.
• Witchsmeller Pursuivant (30:07)
  The Black Death is raging through Western Europe, and the hysteria sweeping through the people has prompted the monarchy to contract the services of the Witchsmeller Pursuivant (Frank Finlay). Of course, with everyone out to get poor Edmund Blackadder, I'm sure you can tell what's going to happen when the Witchsmeller and Edmund cross paths. The real fun is in seeing him try to worm his way out.
• The Black Seal (31:04)
  Edmund finally gets tired of his lot in life and departs to find the seven most evil men in the British Empire to lead a revolt against his own family. When he finds the most evil man in England, however, he is locked in a dungeon with nothing but snails for food and Mad Gerald (Rik Mayall) for company. Will he get out in time to save the royal family from the seven most evil men in the British Empire?

    To be brutally honest, I far prefer the first series of The Black Adder to any of its successors, thanks in no small part to the fact that there is no involvement from Ben Elton, whom I've found distasteful ever since I managed to catch one of his stand-up routines on television. Here, the humour is very mature and kept firmly out of the gutter, most of the time at least. Anyone with a taste for British comedy will be well-advised to pick up this disc.

Video

    Readers will recall that The Black Adder was originally released in November 1999, with a video transfer that exhibited copious amounts of every film and video artefact you care to imagine. This re-release has had the Dolby Digital trailer and all but one of the subtitle options removed, and it appears that the video has been recompressed. Having said all of those things, this is still not a particularly good transfer, but a real improvement over the original release.

    The transfer is presented in the original aspect ratio of 1.33:1, and it is not 16x9 Enhanced.

    The sharpness of this transfer is somewhat improved compared to the original transfer, with objects that are close to the camera having a good level of detail, while objects that are distant to the camera are indistinct. The shadow detail is poor, and low-level noise is occasionally a problem. Grain is also a problem in this transfer, although it is generally confined to the backgrounds.

    The colours in this transfer are variably saturated. Most of the time, they are well saturated without any bleeding or smearing, but composite artefacts, usually in the form of cross-colouration, are present. You can see this in Episode 2 at 26:42, where trails of blue can be seen extending to the right of Brian Blessed's armour.

    The bitrate of this transfer varies up and down between five and seven, sometimes even eight or nine megabits per second, which has eliminated some of the more distracting problems from the previous transfer. MPEG artefacts are easy to find in this transfer, however: just freeze-frame the picture at any moment and you will see blocky pieces of grain extending off the sides of objects. Examples can be found at 3:35 in Episode 1, and 11:55 in Episode 2. Since this is not how we usually watch films, however, I am willing to overlook this particular effect in light of the source material. The macro-blocking in the flames when Frank Finlay burns at 27:25 in Episode 5 is gone, with this entire sequence having much greater resolution. Film-to-video artefacts consisted of the occasional minor aliasing, but this artefact was quite well controlled, considering how much chain mail and other such metallic objects there are in the programme. Film artefacts consisted of some nicks and scratches on the picture, which were found throughout all six episodes, although more of them were found in Episode 1 than the others.

    The English for the Hearing Impaired subtitles defaulted to on with my Toshiba SD-2109, while I had to engage them manually with the Grundig GDV 100D. They are only really about seventy-five percent faithful to the actual dialogue, making them of limited use.

    This disc is Dual-Layered, but no layer change was detected in any of the episodes. I presume that each layer contains three episodes, as was the case with the previous release.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    There is only the one soundtrack on this DVD: the original English dialogue encoded in Dolby Digital 2.0 with a bitrate of 256 kilobits per second. It seems to be something of an improvement upon the original release, but not by much.

    I found the dialogue clear and easy to understand most of the time, in spite of the methods used to record the dialogue and the quality of the master used to create this transfer. Brian Blessed and several other actors shouted all of their dialogue, and the recording techniques occasionally caused these shouted passages to sound somewhat limited in frequency. Aside from this problem, the dialogue seemed pretty easy to understand, except for Rik Mayall's lisping in the final episode, which made him sound like he was speaking through water. There were no discernable problems with audio sync.

    The score music in this film is the work of Howard Goodall. It is infrequently present, and it seems to be based around the same few bars of music played on strings or horns. Aside from the mournful theme that closes the final episode, it is not particularly remarkable.

    The surround channels are not used by this soundtrack, which is fair enough given that the series itself was intended for broadcast on televisions that were mostly monaural at the time. The subwoofer was not specifically encoded into the soundtrack, but it did receive some redirected signal to support the music, a lot of which made use of bass drums.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu

    The menu is static, not 16x9 Enhanced, and silent. The good side is that it takes very little away from the data space used for the video transfer.

    There is a boxed set of Black Adder DVDs available in Region 1 with all five of the serials on five discs, in a case type that I was unable to verify. The boxed set also contains extras such as a Who's Who of the Black Adder series, an interactive guide to historical figures and events, the Black Adder's Christmas Carol special, and an archival interview with Richard Curtis, an episode called The Cavalier Years, and a sing-along. Obviously, this five disc set is the version of choice for dedicated fans, although anyone who can tell me about the transfer quality is welcome to email me.

    The Black Adder, Series One, is one of my favourite comedies.

    The video transfer is rather average, but a definite improvement over the original release.

    The audio transfer is also rather average, but also a definite improvement over the original release.

    The extras are non-existent.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall