My chickens are coming home to roost this week as I’m coming to realise how much I have to get done by early September. For school, that includes two research essays and a seminar presentation, and for work a major website project for which I am writing all the content and coordinating the design and development teams (herding cats). Oh, and I need to fit a couple of weeks of skiing in there, too. And it’s nearly the END of JUNE! So it was either turn to drink or find a little light relief.
An article this week on the Blackadder series – “the most successful historical television sitcom yet conceived” – reminded me how much this show made me laugh when it first came out. Here’s a scene from one of my favourite episodes in which, after the murder of Thomas Becket, the king has made his venal and slithering son Prince Edmund Blackadder the Archbishop of Canterbury. Blackadder and his henchmen immediately set about figuring out how they can make some cash out of the gig, and I think their take on the booming late medieval trade in indulgences and false relics would have brought a smile to Geoffrey Chaucer’s lips.
Friday, June 19, 2009
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5 comments:
Hilarious! I'd forgotten how funny Blackadder was. I wonder if Netflix has the series... Because, you know, the best way to get work done is to watch movies!!! About history. Ahem.
Watching historical comedy is studying, isn't it? Kinda?? I have the DVDs somewhere - I think I might have to drag them out this weekend.
And by movies, I mean moving pictures, including tv series. About history. Which is studying. History. Yes. Absolutely! I'm sure lots of humorous things happened in the past!
Blackadder is super and definitely counts as study material. I am obsessed with series 2 (Prince George and co, especially the Dr Johnson episode). Withnail and I, and Jeeves and Wooster also count as educational.
When I have big deadlines looming, I sometimes have nightmares that are just like the Dictionary episode in that series of Blackadder. Thanks for reminding me about Withnail and I - another classic I must watch again.
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