Scenario
Blackadder Goes Forth is set in 1917 on the Western Front in the trenches of World War I. Captain Edmund Blackadder (Rowan Atkinson) is a professional soldier in the British Army who, until the outbreak of the Great War, has enjoyed a relatively action-free existence fighting natives who were usually "two feet tall and armed with dried grass". Finding himself trapped in the trenches with another "big push" planned, his concern is to avoid being sent over the top to certain death. The series thus chronicles Blackadder's attempts to escape the trenches through various schemes, most of which fail due to bad fortune, misunderstandings and the general incompetence of his comrades. The aforementioned comrades are his second-in-command, idealistic upper-class Edwardian twit Lieutenant George (Hugh Laurie) and their profoundly stupid but dogged batman Private S. Baldrick (Tony Robinson).
Rather than the Germans, who remain generally unseen (with the exception of "Private Plane", where they are a means to escape the trenches), Blackadder's nemeses come in the form of his superior, the eccentric General Melchett (Stephen Fry) who rallies his troops from a French château 35 miles (56 km) from the front, and Melchett's bureaucratic assistant, Captain Kevin Darling (Tim McInnerny). Despite the two being of equal rank, Blackadder treats Darling with contempt - while the former is on the front line, the latter is "folding the general's pyjamas". Their animosity is mutual, largely as a result of Blackadder exploiting the comic potential of Darling's surname at every opportunity.
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Famous quotes containing the word scenario:
“This is the essential distinction—even opposition—between the painting and the film: the painting is composed subjectively, the film objectively. However highly we rate the function of the scenario writer—in actual practice it is rated very low—we must recognize that the film is not transposed directly and freely from the mind by means of a docile medium like paint, but must be cut piece-meal out of the lumbering material of the actual visible world.”
—Sir Herbert Read (1893–1968)