Bums on seats, Laddies! Bums on seats!*
(Sorry. I don’t know. :o )
you mean…Macbeth?
According to JustWatch, all four seasons should be available on Amazon Prime. I’m a bit surprised it’s not showing up for you - JustWatch is a great resource for finding this sort of thing out, usually.
Huh. so they are.
Okay, new question: Anybody know where I can watch the specials without paying extra?
That’s as may be, but it’s still very good. I would not skip it.
First season is different - but it’s still got laughs. Witchsmeller Pursuivant is one of my favourite episodes.
First season does have some interesting moments and it also has Peter Cook which is never a bad thing. It is a slightly different beast but if you watch it first just think of it as the reason why Edmund’s descendants decided to then turn the tables and be cunning rather than stupid. The changes in 2,3 and 4 then make sense.
Also, don’t miss out on Blackadder’s Christmas Carol. The best of the “specials” in my opinion.
Row row row your boat
Gently down the stream,
Belts off, trousers down.
Isn’t it a scream!
Steal the DVDs from somebody? 
2-4, then the specials, especially Back & Forth, skip 1 entirely.
“Am I jumping the gun, Baldrick, or are the words ‘I have a cunning plan’ marching with ill-deserved confidence in the direction of this conversation?”
There’s an unaired pilot that leaked onto the internet a few years ago. More like series 2, but with a different actor playing Baldrick. Worth a look if you stumble across it.
Here’s the pilot. Very much like Blackadder II.
Only in that its LOOK was more like sixteenth than fifteenth century (at first glance, I thought the Queen was played by Miranda Richardson). And Edmund didn’t look as inbred as he did in Season 1. Other than that, the pilot is almost identical to S1E2.
After all I had heard about the series, I admit I was quite disappointed by Season 1. So if you start watching it and don’t like it, don’t give up but skip to Season 2. The later seasons deserve their reputation. But still, Season 1 does have its moments, and IMO is worth the watch.
I just watched a bit of it, but the Blackadder character (Atkinson) of the pilot seems more like that of Series 2-4. The Blackadder character of the first series is a bit like a vocal Mr Bean, a character that Atkinson had developed at university before Blackadder, and which he would revisit after it.
He’s a vicious, scheming, cretinous bastard in S1. A different bastard than Sean…
But with Tony Robinson, Tim McInnerny, and leavened intermittently with BRIAN BLESSED!, it works. For me anyway; but not for many of you, judging by the thread. As I said upthread, it’s six episodes, you can binge it in an eye blink (With optional time for stopping it because you’re laughing so hard.)
It is better in S2. Never realized till you brought it up, how similar his character in S1 is to Mr. Bean.
S1 is well worth watching but it is a bit like “Mr. Beanadder.” And it really helps start the whole saga off well.
I’ve sometimes wondered if the Edmund-Leia marriage was inspired by the marriage of Richard II to Isabella of Valois in 1396. He was 29 at the time, and she was a few days short of her 7th birthday. That was also a purely political marriage and they didn’t live together - she was given her own court.
Your library may have the Blackadder DVDs, which may include the specials.
Blackadder’s Christmas Carol can be found on Youtube, but the quality is poor because the poster did various things to it to circumvent automatic copyright scanning. A better version can be found on another fairly popular video sharing site. Do a Google video search. A couple of lines were censored after its first showing. Someone has uploaded a clip with those lines here. Censored Line in Blackadder's Christmas Carol - YouTube
I still think the first season is the best. It isn’t the same character, Blackadder is an idiot and Baldrick is the clever one. I found its historical parodies much better, and never really enjoyed the fart jokes which dominate the next two seasons.
Four pulled it back, but don’t assume everyone will hate the first season, it’s got great episodes on Shakespeare, witches, the clergy, plague and a bunch of other things. It is its own thing.
Well, they don’t call you Clever Pete for nothing…
Just wanted to say that I enjoy the alternate history aspect of Season 1 very much. And the plays on Shakespeare are quite nice too.