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
Sense and Senility at the speech he wrote, calling it "drivel," and himself, so he plans to quit being a servant and become King of Sardinia. However, he is distracted when, on the way out, Baldrick insults him, saying "Goodbye, you lazy, big nosed, rubber-faced bastard." Uncharacteristically, he does not touch Baldrick, but instead scathingly tells him "I wouldn't bet you a single groat that you could last "five minutes" here without me." Soon after that, the actors rehearse their own play, "The Bloody Murder of the Foul Prince Romero and His Enormously Bosomed Wife," which consists mostly of long and very gory