Blackadder writers Ben Elton and Richard Curtis created a lost sitcom starring ska band Madness that the BBC scrapped.
The show would have seen Suggs and his bandmates get involved in madcap adventures. It would have been similar to the 1960s American series The Monkees, which focused on the fictional moptop band.
Ben said: “The first thing Richard wanted to collaborate with me on was sort of an idea like The Monkees but with Madness. I thought it was a great idea and we met Suggs and the boys and.. had a lot of fun and we put a script together.”
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Ben and Richard got as far as creating a script for a short pilot episode in which Suggs is elected Prime Minister of the UK. The rest of Madness were his cabinet and they moved the Government to Camden, North London. But Ben says that it “withered on the vine” with Beeb bosses. He added: “The BBC were interested but they weren’t very interested and I’ll tell you why, that’s because Madness were just not smash hit chart heroes anymore. This was ’83 or something and they’d been huge from ’79 to ’81.
(Image: Press Association)
“Sadly the BBC couldn’t see that this was going to be a whole new thing.”That’s when Richard said, ‘There’s another idea I wanted to talk to you about, why don’t you join me on Blackadder?’” It come after the news that Ben is debating bringing Blackadder back after years of fans begging for the show to return.
(Image: AFP/Getty Images)
Between 1983 and 1989, Rowan Atkinson, starred as loveable antihero, Edmund Blackadder, with Tony Robinson earning the appreciation of the critics for his portrayal of Baldrick. During an interview with Lorraine in April 2023, Tony gave his fans a glimmer of hope, as he teased a 40th-anniversary return. He said: “All I’m going to say is: everybody likes to celebrate a 40th anniversary, don’t they? So there must be some fresh way we can celebrate our 40th birthday, wouldn’t you think?”
The 64-year-old writer has since he’d love to put pen to paper with his old partner for a new storyline and possibly a theatrical version of the show. He told The Sun: “A Blackadder play, if Richard was keen on it, I’d be interested. Not an adaptation of episodes, it would be an original play. “When I wrote Upstart Crow, I did three series and three Christmas specials for TV, which was a load of writing, but I’m proud of the fact I then did an original play.”
Blackadder hit screens last year for a Comic Relief special. While Tony returned as Baldrick, his co-star Rowan Atkinson was nowhere to be seen.
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Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
