Nob and Nobility

"Nob and Nobility" is the third episode of the third series of the BBC sitcom Blackadder.

Plot

Edmund is disgusted with the English obsession with the Scarlet Pimpernel, the masked vigilante who has saved so many French aristocrats from the French Revolution. After Edmund disparages the Pimpernel, two effete noblemen, Topper (Tim McInnerny) and Smedley (Nigel Planer), bet him a thousand guineas that he can't go to France, rescue an aristocrat and present him at the French Embassy Ball. He accepts, but instead of actually going to France takes the far safer course of going to Mrs. Miggins' coffee house to find a French aristocrat willing to pretend he's been rescued. Le Comte de Frou Frou agrees to pretend he was rescued.

When they arrive at the embassy, however, they are arrested by a revolutionary (Chris Barrie) who has assassinated the ambassador. Blackadder, Frou Frou and Baldrick are put in a dungeon, but Frou Frou is later taken away by the revolutionary to be tortured. They are rescued by Smedley, claiming to be the real Scarlet Pimpernel, whom Blackadder accidentally poisons with a glass of wine and suicide pills that Frou Frou had given them earlier. Frou Frou also manages to escape, and they all manage to make it home. Frou Frou then reveals himself to be Topper in disguise, and that he and the "mysteriously missing" Smedley are together the Scarlet Pimpernel. Moments away from exposing Edmund's treachery, he accept Edmund's offer of a glass of wine — and, of course, dies, Blackadder having slipped another suicide pill into the glass. Edmund convinces the Prince that he is The Scarlet Pimpernel, and collects an "enormous postal order" intended for the hero.

Trivia

• This episode was not aired in the U.S. due to a dispute over the rights to the use of the "Scarlet Pimpernel" title, though it is available on the video and DVD versions.^[1]

• Tim McInnerny had played the part of Lord Percy Percy in the two previous series of Blackadder but refused to do it again because he did not want to be typecast as a buffoon. This episode was the only time in the series that he made an appearance other than as a regular character, and it was as a fop who turns out to be a lot braver than Blackadder ever suspected.

• There is a line cut from the initial video and DVD releases, and often from television repeats, apparently over "contractual issues". Baldrick talks about the Scarlet Pimpernel, saying

"They seek him here,

They seek him there,

Those Frenchies seek him everywhere.

Is he in Heaven or is he in Hell?..."

and Blackadder chips in with

"...And what's that revolting garlic smell?"

The line is intact on the BBC Radio version, which rebroadcast the audio portions of the episodes, and which has been released on CD. The scene is also intact on the 2009 'Blackadder Remastered - The Ultimate Edition' DVD release.

References

External links

• "Nob and Nobility" at BBC Programmes
• "Nob and Nobility" at the Internet Movie Database