This has surely been done before, but I haven't seen it in years and I think it'd be a hoot to compare and suggest ATL series of Blackadder - either in AH scenarios or just real life historical settings that were not used by the original series.
For comparison, here's all (IIRC) the OTL settings:
The Black Adder - The Wars of the Roses
Blackadder II - Elizabethan England
Blackadder the Third - The Regency
Blackadder Goes Forth - The First World War
Blackadder's Christmas Carol - Dickensian/Victorian London/The Far Future
Blackadder: The Cavalier Years - the English Civil War
Blackadder Back and Forth - The Roman occupation of Britain, the Elizabethans again, the Napoleonic Wars, the present day (references to other periods including WWII and the 1980s)
Only the first four were full-on series, and the last one, made in 1999 in co-operation with Sky, was unsurprisingly a pile of shit. There are also interviews which suggest the setting for the fifth series (which was considered for a time) was to be the 1960s, based around a band called The Blackadder Five. I don't know how I feel about that. Stephen Fry once wrote that he'd've liked to do a Blackadder film called The Red Adder, set during the Russian Civil War as a pastiche of Dr Zhivago.
My own idea for an OTL fifth series was 'Blackadder at Checkpoint Five', set in the late 1940s/early 1950s as an early-cold war (but as historically inaccurate as the previous ones, so might include the Cuban Missile Crisis) piece set at a British Army checkpoint, later office, in post-war Berlin. Blackadder is a demobbed officer who's been commissioned as the head of the checkpoint with Baldrick as his aide, a distant relative of George is a rabid anti-communist intelligence officer, and Darling is overseeing the whole thing from a military perspective, being the son of WWI era Darling and finally in the top job. Melchett I was never sure about, I didn't want to just copy the WWI persona and that one was quite different to the Elizabethan one, so I might've made him an 'M' like figure closer to his bishop character in series 2 - one that battles with Blackadder using wits and often gets the better of him. Cameos from Miranda Richardson as a beautiful Russian spy, of course, and Rik Mayall as James Flashman, MI6's top man. Hilarity ensues when Blackadder has to defuse altercations with the Russians, accidentally (or deliberately) sabotages the British efforts in the Suez, and makes an enemy of the incoming Mayor of West Berlin.
In other timelines, it's very possible that in world without Yes, Minister, a fifth or sixth Blackadder series (produced, say, in the late 1990s or now) could have seen Edmund in the Sir Humphrey role and George or Percy/Darling as the minister/Prime Minister. A pastiche of the Thatcher era. However, such a thing isn't very plausible in OTL because Yes Minister very much does exist.
Other obvious candidates include a WWII setting, but it would be a bit too similar to WWI and there's a lot of WWII sitcoms already. Going back in time again, a fleshed-out Victorian series could have worked, as could a classical-era one. I feel the future should be left to Red Dwarf.
So, what ideas do you have?
For comparison, here's all (IIRC) the OTL settings:
The Black Adder - The Wars of the Roses
Blackadder II - Elizabethan England
Blackadder the Third - The Regency
Blackadder Goes Forth - The First World War
Blackadder's Christmas Carol - Dickensian/Victorian London/The Far Future
Blackadder: The Cavalier Years - the English Civil War
Blackadder Back and Forth - The Roman occupation of Britain, the Elizabethans again, the Napoleonic Wars, the present day (references to other periods including WWII and the 1980s)
Only the first four were full-on series, and the last one, made in 1999 in co-operation with Sky, was unsurprisingly a pile of shit. There are also interviews which suggest the setting for the fifth series (which was considered for a time) was to be the 1960s, based around a band called The Blackadder Five. I don't know how I feel about that. Stephen Fry once wrote that he'd've liked to do a Blackadder film called The Red Adder, set during the Russian Civil War as a pastiche of Dr Zhivago.
My own idea for an OTL fifth series was 'Blackadder at Checkpoint Five', set in the late 1940s/early 1950s as an early-cold war (but as historically inaccurate as the previous ones, so might include the Cuban Missile Crisis) piece set at a British Army checkpoint, later office, in post-war Berlin. Blackadder is a demobbed officer who's been commissioned as the head of the checkpoint with Baldrick as his aide, a distant relative of George is a rabid anti-communist intelligence officer, and Darling is overseeing the whole thing from a military perspective, being the son of WWI era Darling and finally in the top job. Melchett I was never sure about, I didn't want to just copy the WWI persona and that one was quite different to the Elizabethan one, so I might've made him an 'M' like figure closer to his bishop character in series 2 - one that battles with Blackadder using wits and often gets the better of him. Cameos from Miranda Richardson as a beautiful Russian spy, of course, and Rik Mayall as James Flashman, MI6's top man. Hilarity ensues when Blackadder has to defuse altercations with the Russians, accidentally (or deliberately) sabotages the British efforts in the Suez, and makes an enemy of the incoming Mayor of West Berlin.
In other timelines, it's very possible that in world without Yes, Minister, a fifth or sixth Blackadder series (produced, say, in the late 1990s or now) could have seen Edmund in the Sir Humphrey role and George or Percy/Darling as the minister/Prime Minister. A pastiche of the Thatcher era. However, such a thing isn't very plausible in OTL because Yes Minister very much does exist.
Other obvious candidates include a WWII setting, but it would be a bit too similar to WWI and there's a lot of WWII sitcoms already. Going back in time again, a fleshed-out Victorian series could have worked, as could a classical-era one. I feel the future should be left to Red Dwarf.
So, what ideas do you have?
