Blackadder from this series ranked number three in a list of the top 25 television "putdowns" of the last 40 years by the "Radio Times" magazine: "The eyes are open, the mouth moves, but Mr. Brain has long since departed, hasn't he, Percy?" "Blackadder the Third" is set in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, a period known as the Regency. In the series, Edmund Blackadder Esquire is the butler to the Prince Regent, the Prince of Wales (the prince is played by Hugh Laurie as a complete fop and idiot). Despite Edmund's respected intelligence and abilities, he has no
Edmund Blackadder IV and Edmund's older brother Harry, he is briefly King of England; a lyric one of the closing credits for "Blackadder II" describes him as "a king / Although for only thirty seconds". Prince Edmund is one of the many Blackadders to be killed on screen: he dies after accidentally drinking poisoned wine, although he had already been severely mutilated by his childhood nemesis, the Duke of Burgundy. He is sometimes called King Edmund because in the last episode of the first series of Blackadder, he was the last of the Royal family to die, making him automatically King for