Blackadder: The Cavalier Years his life to be in ruins. While Baldrick informs him that he has accepted a job, Sir Edmund wonders who could be so utterly without heart and soul, so low and degraded, as to behead the King of England. As his own words sink in, he questions Baldrick, who admits that it was he who accepted the position. (Historically King Charles' executioner was Richard Brandon.) Baldrick explains to the understandably enraged Blackadder that he has a cunning plan to save the King. He presents Sir Edmund with a huge pumpkin, poorly painted to represent a human face. He plans to
Blackadder essentially to play himself. Political commentator Vincent Hanna played a character billed as "his own great-great-great grandfather" in the episode "Dish and Dishonesty" of "Blackadder the Third". Hanna was asked to take part because the scene was of a by-election in which Baldrick was a candidate and, in the style of modern television, Hanna gave a long-running "live" commentary of events at the count (and interviewed candidates and election agents) to a crowd through the town hall window. Howard Goodall's theme tune has the same melody throughout all the series, but is played in roughly the style of the period