‘If I could live for 300 years I’d write two more sitcoms’
Blackadder and Dibley creator says TV comedy is joy to write
RICHARD Curtis wants to create two new sitcoms but fears he does not have enough time left.
The 67-year-old screenwriter, below, is the brains behind two of the greatest studio comedies of all time – Blackadder and The Vicar of Dibley.
He is also the mastermind of hit romcom films Four Weddings and a Funeral and Love Actually but prefers writing for the small screen. However, he is aware the sands of time are against him.
He said: “I love sitcoms, if I could live for 300 years I would write two more.
“There is a structural joy to it. I do know how the sitcoms that I wrote work, which is there is sort of a setting up of two plots and then interweaving them.The setting up of venues.”
He said in The Vicar of Dibley it was normally the kitchen of Dawn French’s priest and the council room. Richard added: “In Blackadder it was always Blackadder’s rooms and then the prince’s or queen’s room.
“Or that introduction of a new person in scene three, then they will have an opinion about him in scene four and then he will return in scene five, there is a joy about it. That joy in order, that joy in knowing how construction works… when you pare a sitcom down – like writing a sonnet – you actually produce better work.”
The last series of Blackadder, which placed Rowan Atkinson’s titular character and Tony Robinson’s Baldrick in the First World War trenches, aired in 1989. But the show still has an incredibly loyal fanbase as well as new viewers finding it.
Richard also told the Cunning cast podcast that the secret to Blackadder’s longevity is that each series is in a different era, which means the show does not age like other classic sitcoms such as John Cleese’s Fawlty Towers.
He said: “I wonder whether one of the reasons it has lasted is because it’s set in history and it doesn’t date.
“Even Fawlty is starting to look a bit creaky round the edges but because of the fact that we were 400 years out of date when we started I think it has a long-lasting quality.
“Then I think the process that I find so hard, which was the actors not rehearsing, simply rewriting and arguing about the script for five days a week, did make it very dense.”
He added: “It has a richness to it which means that when people return to it there’s still lots going on rather than it being very sort of unitary and simple. I also think we caught a lot of people in their performing prime.”