Blackadder Remastered: The Ultimate Edition

For the sheer quantity of laughs in its wildly comic situations and outrageous characters, Blackadder ranks as one of the great British TV comedies. Rowan Atkinson and Richard Curtis created the original six-episode show, broadcast in 1983, with Atkinson as Edmund, the sniveling youngest son of King Richard IV who remakes himself as a dastardly villain, the Black Adder, and with the help of loyal but moronic peasant Baldrick (Tony Robinson) attempts to murder his way to the throne. The first series ends with a cast decimation right out of Hamlet—but death didn't stop this romp through history. In three subsequent offerings, each set in a different era, the descendents of Edmund Blackadder are a sharper bunch, and Atkinson evolves from buffoon to cultured gentleman with a razor wit. He's a cool head in the court of Queen Elizabeth I (Miranda Richardson as an infantile party girl) in Blackadder II, advisor to the crown prince of England (Hugh Laurie) in Blackadder the Third, and a captain trying to survive an oblivious commanding general (Stephen Fry) and idiot underlings during World War I in Blackadder Goes Forth. The show concluded in 1989, bringing the total number of episodes to 24 (plus the specials “Blackadder's Christmas Carol” and “Blackadder: The Cavalier Years”), but the cast reunited in 1999 for the time-travel farce “Blackadder Back and Forth.” All are collected on this six-disc set, which includes DVD extras such as new audio commentaries, the behind-the-scenes documentary “Baldrick's Video Diary,” a “Blackadder Rides Again” 2008 hour-long retrospective, and interviews. Highly recommended. (S. Axmaker)