I am in complete agreement with most of the reviews posted and do not want to add anything else but to cast my vote for the final scene in "Goodbyee" as being the finest in television drama or comedy. I say comedy or drama because the scene seamlessly combines the two so that you are almost incapable of knowing exactly how to respond. The scene is prefaced by the scene in which the chillingly true nature of General Melchett is revealed. Melchett orders his obsequious clerk, Darling, to the front for the suicidal big push the next morning. Melchett is revealed as being a deadly dangerous buffoon. Read Sigfried Sassoon's poem "The General" for a similar depiction of an old duffer whose incompetent planning "does for" his men who are ironically aware but strangely accepting of his eccentrically bumbling nature. This scene reveals Melchett as being something far more sinister than is evident in the preceding episodes. The shadow of the driver falling over Darling who is on his knees begging Melchett not to send him is as chilling as anything I have seen.
As the reality of going over the top dawns on the mindlessly jingoistic George and then even on the endearingly gormless Baldrick, the true horror of war is evoked. The hopes and dreams of ordinary young men are about to be brutally dashed. The final stroke of genius is to have Darling, a man for whom we and Blackadder have had contempt, poignantly confide the plans he had for his future after surviving the war. "Marry Dorris ...keep wicket for the gentleman's eleven." Do you laugh or cry at this? I think most of us feel at a loss to know how to respond just as Wilfred Owen in his poem "Futility" as he witnesses his men's futile attempt to revive a dying comrade by putting him out to lie in the sun.
The final freeze frame and dissolve into the poppy fields of Flanders has been well documented. What more can anyone say about mankind's greatest folly - war.
As the reality of going over the top dawns on the mindlessly jingoistic George and then even on the endearingly gormless Baldrick, the true horror of war is evoked. The hopes and dreams of ordinary young men are about to be brutally dashed. The final stroke of genius is to have Darling, a man for whom we and Blackadder have had contempt, poignantly confide the plans he had for his future after surviving the war. "Marry Dorris ...keep wicket for the gentleman's eleven." Do you laugh or cry at this? I think most of us feel at a loss to know how to respond just as Wilfred Owen in his poem "Futility" as he witnesses his men's futile attempt to revive a dying comrade by putting him out to lie in the sun.
The final freeze frame and dissolve into the poppy fields of Flanders has been well documented. What more can anyone say about mankind's greatest folly - war.