By Suddenly, 30 years after the fourth series of Blackadder aired for the first time, it sounds like we might not have seen the last of the dynasty.
Clearly, this might not happen. It's based on a quote apparently given to The Sun by a source who reckons they saw Rowan Atkinson, Hugh Laurie, Stephen Fry and Tony Robinson heading into Soho House for a big get together and a chat about working together again.
"They were all having a great laugh and they are all old friends," the source said. "So they just said, 'Yes, let's do it'. It is being written now. Rowan has been saying he is extremely excited."
Sounds nice. When's it set then? We've already had the Middle Ages, Elizabethan London, the Regency and the trenches on the Western Front. World War Two maybe? Roman Britain? The Bronze Age?
"It will be in the modern day," the source went on. "Blackadder will be a lot older, of course, so they've come up with the ageing university lecturer idea. Curtis and Atkinson have discussed guest appearances from stars such as Tom Hardy and Russell Brand."
Right. That might be based on writer Richard Curtis telling the Radio Times: "The thing about Blackadder was, it was a young man's show criticising older people, saying how stupid those in authority were. So I did once think, 'If we ever did anything again, it should be Blackadder as a teacher in a university, about how much we hate young people'."
Curtis was talking about a possible sketch in a future live show rather than a full series set in Cambridge. But let's suppose that this is for real, and there's a full Blackadder reunion in the offing. None of what we've heard about it makes any sense whatsoever.
Sticking Blackadder in a university in 2019 makes no sense. Wasn't most of the energy of Blackadder drawn from the fact it could sprint through every cliché and presumption about its different time periods? Wasn't that most of the joke, that Blackadder always had the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, and could be sarcastic about whatever was going on because he was basically the audience's emissary to the past? Making him the past's emissary to the present would be a bit odd.
Using Blackadder to bollock young people doesn't make much more sense. In 2019, a university is a bit of a loaded place to put your ageing, cantankerous protagonist if you want anyone to like him. The kind of professors who pour scorn on young people and their progressive politics end up becoming icons on hard-right Twitter and proudly horrible subreddits to people who love fighting imaginary SJWs. Plus, he'd be sarcasming at kids saddled with about £50,000 of debt for the pleasure of hearing his wisdom. It's a bit too real.
Apart from that, I can tell you right now what the jokes will be. Gender-neutral toilets, what's all that about?? Eh?? Vegans?? Nobody gets hammered on pints of snakebite anymore, what's all that about?? All the kids these days, they're always on their phones aren't they?? With their hip hop?? You can't make Rowan Atkinson say all that. It's cruel.
It makes very little sense. Then again, it's scarcely less odd than the entire set-up and execution of Curtis' other Baby Boomer wish fulfilment fantasy, the what-if-the-Beatles-never-existed film Yesterday. The film's Wikipedia page has been vandalised repeatedly in the last couple of days - I'll not spoil what it is that protagonist Jack realises only he can remember in the last scene, but suffice to say it isn't Status Quo, Neon Genesis Evangelion or 9/11.
It might not happen. There have been so, so many times when various Blackadder alumni have talked about series that nearly got made - like Redadder, which would have been set in the Russia of 1917 and featured Rik Mayall as Rasputin, and the 1960s beat generation idea in which Tony Robinson would have played a drummer called Bald Rick - or floated a reunion, and it's never happened yet. But this is, by a distance, the least edifying and most bizarre pitch yet.
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