Originally posted by MarkJerling My favourite parts of the Blackadder series are those with the Queen and Nursie.
Miranda Richardson based her Queen Elizabeth on someone she knew at school, who was very smart but got through life pretending to be a ditz.
Richardson was such a favourite that like Rik Mayall she guests in both the later seasons.
Originally posted by MarkJerling What were these people on when they made that series!?!?!
Because you can argue that creativity is usually the work of individuals, Mark, and extra cooks are often unwanted, I am interested in how artistic collaborations can succeed.
Richard Curtis (Love Actually, Notting Hill, Vicar of Dibley, et al) and Ben Elton (The Young Ones, etc) were like Gilbert/Sullivan and Elton John/Bernie Taupin, not being in the same room when they wrote.
They would each do three episodes for the year, and then hand them over to the other, who had complete control of the rewrite.
Because they knew what the other person liked, it's not easy to say who did what.
A genitalia gag might in fact be written by Curtis, and some historical insight might be by Elton.
It was a spectacular re-tooling and recovery, because the first series (written by Curtis and Rowan Atkinson) had been an expensive failure.