The first episode, Captain Cook, begins with the stupid Baldrick (Tony Robinson)
explaining the first of his cunning plans, by carving his own name on a bullet
because "you know when they say there's a bullet with your name on it?" -
and you can guess the rest. General Melchett (Stephen Fry) has a plan
of his own to invite one of the men to paint a cover for the next issue of
"King and Country" to inspire the men for that final big push. The following
episodes continue to be packed with one-liners, the second one, Corporal
Punishment finding Blackadder eating the pigeon messenger in an attempt
to avoid the firing squad, while the next, Major Star, brings a new
playmate for Edmund in the form of "Bob" aka Driver Parkhurst (Gabrielle
Glaister)
Another attempt to escape going over the top comes in Private Plane after Lord Flasheart
(Rik Mayall on first-rate form) appears and teaches the men to fly
in the Royal Air Corps, aka the "Twenty Minuters", the life expectancy of
a new pilot(!) Could be worse - you could be captured by Baron von Richthoven
(Adrian Edmondson) after you crash-land. In General Hospital,
Blackadder seeks out a German spy on behalf of the British service in the local
hospital under the care of Nurse Mary (Miranda Richardson), but when
the final episode, Goodbyeee comes around it's a last-ditch attempt
to avoid the big push when Blackadder sees a way out: claim insanity by
wearing underpants on your head and sticking two pencils up your nose. When
that fails he has to call in a favour from Field Marshall Dougie Haig (Geoffrey Palmer),
but when even that doesn't work, Baldrick might just have one last cunning
plan...
If you plan to watch this DVD while drinking a brew make sure it's real and
not concocted from coffee substitute (mud), milk substitute (saliva) and
sugar substitute (dandruff).
Quotable quotes include Blackadder's "I think the phrase rhymes with
clucking bell." and on Captain Darling's arrival at the trench in episode
six, "I only wrote one word in my diary today. It simply says... 'Bugger'"
Just time for one more cunning plan?
The picture is better than the first two discs and as good as the third.
There are no visible print scratches but it can occasionally look a little
dark. The soundtrack is in stereo like the last disc, but again it's 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
the subtitles come in English and Dutch.
As with the second series, there are no extras, but it's still worth
£19.99 for the full series.
As of April 2009, Blu-rays and DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TH-37PX80B
37" Plasma TV with a Sony BDP-1500 Blu-ray player and played through a Yamaha DSP-AX820 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Jan 2011: Intel Quad Core Dell XPS 8100, i7 CPU 860 @ 2.80Ghz, 8Gb RAM, nVidia GeForce GTS 240, Windows 7
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
