Bells (Blackadder) marks the first appearance of the Bob/Kate and Flashheart archetypes that appear again in "Blackadder Goes Forth". Rik Mayall, who played Lord Flashheart, allegedly designed the character's costume himself. John Lloyd has said that Mayall virtually rewrote his part to feature "loads of jokes", which annoyed the writers, Curtis and Elton. It was the only episode of the series to feature location filming, at Wilton House in Wiltshire. The music performed as Blackadder courts "Bob" is Vaughan Williams' "Fantasia on Greensleeves". In 1993, in conjunction with Comic Relief, this episode was given away free on cassette tape with boxes of
The Foretelling The Foretelling "The Foretelling" is the first episode of the BBC sitcom "The Black Adder", the first series of the long-running comedy programme "Blackadder". It marks Rowan Atkinson's début as the character Edmund Blackadder, and is the first appearance of the recurring characters Baldrick (Tony Robinson) and Percy (Tim McInnerny). The comedy actor Peter Cook guest stars as King Richard III. "The Black Adder" is a historical comedy set in late Medieval England on the cusp of the Tudor Period, and centres on the eponymous "Black Adder", the pseudonym adopted from this episode onwards by Edmund Plantagenet, Duke of Edinburgh.