Dom Robinson reviews
The Black Adder 2
The Historic Second Series
Distributed by
Producer:
Screenplay:
Richard Curtis and Ben Elton
Music:
Cast:
Lord Blackadder: Rowan Atkinson
Baldrick: Tony Robinson
Lord Percy: Tim McInnerry
Queenie: Miranda Richardson
Lord Melchett: Stephen Fry
Nursie Patsy Byrne
Black Adder II was, IMHO, the best series made
and this disc comes just over a year after the first release and I look forward to the
BBC being rather more prolific with their DVD schedule, taking the opportunity
to bring out more recent titles day-and-date with the VHS equivalent,
as opposed to primarily back-catalogue fare.
Once again there are six episodes, starting with Bells in which Edmund
gets a new 'man'-servant (Gabrielle Glaister) named Kate ("it's short
for Bob") and is set to marry him/her with Lord Flashheart (Rik Mayall)
as his best man; Head sees Edmund as the newly-appointed Minister in
Charge of Religious Genocide and Lord High Executioner, leaving him in a pickle
when Lord Farrow is offed; and Potato send Blackadder off with Captain
Redbeard (Tom Baker) onto the high seas in search of a great
discovery - and an even greater present on their return...
In Money, Blackadder is blackmailed out of £1000 by the
baby-eating Bishop of Bath and Wells - failure to pay will result in a red-hot
spike up his bottom, while Percy makes a brooch of purest green; Beer
brings the arrival of Lady Whiteadder (Miriam Margolyes), the greatest
piss-up in the world ever and an encounter with a turnip that's shaped exactly
like a thingy; and in Chains, Hugh Laurie plays Ludwig, a master
of disguise, attempting to overthrown the Queen and her entire staff.
Like the first series DVD, the picture here is by no means perfect but it's
certainly watchable. There's no artifacts on view but it does look a little
hazy from time to time. It's presented in its original fullscreen ratio, being
a TV series from the 1980s and the average bitrate falls between 5-6Mb/s,
depending on which episode you're watching.
The mono soundtrack is purely functional, giving clear dialogue.
36 chapters spread out the series, the menus have some animation showing
clips from the episodes but only the main one has the theme tune, while
English-only applies to both the dialogue and subtitles.
There are no extras, but twenty notes is certainly worth it for this
high quality series.
FILM CONTENT
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS
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OVERALL
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Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2001.
The following is a list of all the Black Adder DVDs reviewed online to date :
1999 The Black Adder
2001 Black Adder II
2001 Black Adder The Third
2001 Black Adder Goes Forth
2001 Black Adder: Back And Forth
2002 Blackadder's Christmas Carol
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DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TXW32R4 32" widescreen TV
connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and
played through a Sony STR-DB930 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
