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
Blackadder II the previous series, as the puritanical Lady Whiteadder in "Beer"; and Stephen Fry's comedy partner Hugh Laurie, who appears twice, first as the drunken Simon Partridge in "Beer" and in the final episode as the evil Prince Ludwig. Laurie was later given a larger role as George in the next two series. Also Bob, played by Gabrielle Glaister, a former classmate of Ben Elton's, made her first appearance. Several of the characters were seen in similar guises in later series. The opening titles are accompanied by a mock-Elizabethan arrangement of Howard Goodall's "Blackadder" theme played on a recorder and an