The Unwanted Blog

“Blackadder” was a British sitcom from the 1980s starring Rowan Atkinson. Each of its four seasons was set in a different time period…  the late 1400’s, the late 1500’s, the early 1800’s and finally during World War One. Much the same cast of actors played much the same characters, simply being descendants of the characters from prior seasons. I found it to be entertaining as all getout.

The final episode of the final season was meant to be the very last. But there was a problem: as originally filmed, the climax of the episode was *terrible.* The characters, all soldiers in the British army in the trenches of WWI, are ordered to go over the top and charge, stupidly, into German machine gun fire. This of course leads to them all getting cut down. But as actually filmed, that scene was *awful.* To call the acting half-assed is an insult to asses everywhere; the directing sucks; the cinematography stinks. But when they got a look at the footage it was too late to go back and try to film it again. So the editors set about trying to salvage *something* from it. And by taking a less-is-more approach, they ended up turning just a few seconds of video from utter garbage into something truly remarkable. In my opinion, it ranks up there with “The Iron Giant” and his “Superman” moment.

First, watch how the episode played out in the end:

Then behold how it could have been just terrible, but was rescued: