User Reviews

Well, this is it. Not only is the fourth series of Blackadder coming to an end, this episode is putting an end to the whole legacy - four series spanning 500 years in history end here. And I am glad to say that this great comedy tradition is brought to an absolutely brilliant and powerful close - the characters we know and love are about to go "over the top" to glory, and never come back. This episode features many things that make it truly unique and rank it higher than all the others - Baldrick actually reveals his past, George expresses his fear, Darling joins the trench trio as they prepare to go to their deaths and General Melchett finally surrenders Darling and sends him to his death. Blackadder meets the elusive Field Marshal Haig, who turns out to be an idiot. We find out about the pasts of George, Blackadder and Baldrick - and that is what makes it great. None of them are exactly hardened warriors - even Blackadder himself admits: "The type of people we liked to fight were two feet tall and armed with dry grass." This episode is the most meaningful and sad of all the episodes - it isn't complex, but it is hugely moving and we really feel for all of the characters, who all have human and realistic sides to all of them. This episode shall linger in the mind long after the field of poppies fade away, and is easily the most realistic depiction of trench life that you will find in this series. And that makes me proud to say that this is the best Blackadder episode - not just of Series 4, but of the whole legacy. The one-liners and funny Baldrick scenarios once again take precedence over emotions and violence in this episode, but the humour actually makes the ending more powerful, and make it more effective than most dramas. "Goodbyeee" is an episode to be proud of.

The ending won't be winning any awards for design any time soon, but its simplicity makes it better. The sound of the Blackadder theme tune being played in a sombre fashion, the sight of our four boys rising over the top of the trenches where they are met with furious explosions and gunfire, and the feeling of them being ravaged by the explosions and shells is caught brilliantly in slow motion, and sums up the real life experience - it feels like it is not happening. 90 years on, men are being sent to their deaths by incompetent fools - Blackadder Goes Forth's greatest talent is taking the truths of war and giving them a hilarious twist. The ending isn't funny, but it is the best thing about this episode, and you won't forget it. It carries an important message, and shows that all along, Blackadder Goes Forth's aim was to depict WWI's drudgery in a funny fashion. And it has done that job brilliantly and with honesty.

This last episode of Blackadder brings one of our proudest comedy traditions to the close it has always deserved, and proves to be an experience that nobody will forget. To write a fifth series of Blackadder would ruin anything - we shall leave it as it has been for the past 17 years, with our heroes looking death in the face and running towards it, preparing for fate.

My comments have spanned every single Blackadder episode from the first of Series 1 to this one - I have to say, this was the one that I most enjoyed reviewing. I have seen Back and Forth, and I may review that, but I know full well that it will never equal the classics, and does not contain the truths and wit of the 80s.

May the brave soldiers who died in World War I never be forgotten.

Seriously, the first time I saw the end scene when the battle fades to grey and to the poppies was the only time I have cried watching TV. Because of the show (and Wilfred Owen's) I now have a tattoo on my upper arm with two rows of barbed wire and poppies and the text "Dulce et Decorum est Pro Patria Mori".

The greatest 30 mins of TV I have ever seen. Nothing comes close. Seriously. This is a programme that takes on the horror of war - it doesn't give in to punchlines and caricatures and doesn't focus on bloody horror. This is the one episode that should be shown to anyone who thinks that British comedy is shallow and pointless.

"Goodbyeee" is far more than simply brilliant satire. This is the most sobering ending of any war film ever done--and certainly the most impressive for any World War I film, Paths of Glory and Gallipoli included. The final images of soft and gently healing earth and poppies filling in what was so brutally thrown away--especially the lives of the characters that we had come to treasure through the development of the series--brings to life all the images of "Great War" waste that resonate throughout works such as Robert Graves' memoir Goodbye to All That. Truly Goodbyeee was an extraordinary accomplishment, and one that took a rare determination and insight to execute. It deserves careful study by those who would work in the visual and performance arts fields for its brilliant blending of a stark economy of words, the singularity of setting, and the authenticity of the collective rising sense of a fateful duty (without histrionics or excessive drama) leading to that unforgettable leap into eternity...

One of the best episodes of any comedy series, but one that has an important message. The plot revolves around Blackadder's attempt to avoid going over the top in another doomed offensive. The performances are excellent with the whole cast raising the bar for the final episode and the story getting gradually darker until its logical conclusion.

Whilst the rest of the episode plays a little like Catch-22 (it is potentially lethal to go over the top but staying means that you will be executed) the end of the episode is what stays in the mind long after the field of poppies fade away.

It addresses some of the issues of the time, the foolishness of the reasons behind the war and how it came to pass (Baldrick's explanation is not the worst I have heard and I am a history graduate), the seeming attitude of the generals and the differences between what the war was and how people thought it was going to be.

The final few minutes of the show are the most important. The show had continually made fun of the predicaments which befell the troops, but at the last the tone becomes ultra serious, the fears of the characters coming to the fore. Captain Darling comments on the simple things he had hoped for in his life, George expresses his fear for the first time and Blackadder makes comments (which he does not believe) about dinner in Berlin.

While not funny this is important as it underlines the sacrifice that many young men, on all sides, made in a pointless and highly destructive war.

This may be a testament to the small number of anti-war films I have watched, but this is the only film (I can't think of a broad enough term) I have ever watched where I truly felt at the visceral, emotional level that war is evil and insane. Most anti-war movies I have seen leave me thinking "Yeah, war is stupid", but they don't make me feel that way - emotionally I feel nothing. After watching Goodbyeee, however, that is exactly how I felt.

Satire has long been the most effective way of conveying a political message. Certainly, this episode pulls out all the stops, from its comical depiction of Field Marshal Haig to Lieutenant George's inability to present a case for the war. Remarkably, despite being absolutely hilarious, these do not really contribute to the pacifist message of the episode.

Rather, it is the honest and simple characterisation of the protagonists as they prepare for their end that really builds the case against the insanity of war. Lieutentant George's simple but heartfelt admission that "I'm scared" and Blackadder's parting comment about nobody noticing "another madman around here" - these are the simple but surprisingly effective elements that prepare the viewer for the final (and again, surprisingly touching) sequence as the men go over the top.

I think that this truly shows the brilliance of the cast and producers - their ability to effectively combine comedy, sarcastic wit, snide asides, and a serious message into an effective episode that succeeds both at making people laugh and feel the horror of war. The final scene, with the men fruitlessly charging and the sombre adaptation of the theme song playing over it, remains the only depiction on screen I have ever seen that made me feel the real futility of war.

I'm not a pacifist, and never have been - but I've always known that war is a foolish and insane thing. Goodbyeee didn't have to convince me of that on an intellectual level - but it did convince me of that truth on an emotional level, and for that alone, it is the best episode of the Blackadder series. (Oh, and did I mention that it's absolutely hilarious as well?) Ten out of ten, and a job well done, with brass knobs on, as Lieutenant George might say.

This is the best half-hour of television ever made. There's nothing else that could ever topple it from that position. What more is there to say?

The plot is a basic one but it's not trying to tell a story. The trench Edmund commands is finally going to do their duty and fight.

It's script is setting out to examine the characters and their individual histories before the war began. We learn that George was in the "Tiddlywinkers" pals' brigade and Baldrick was in another one. Both have lost all members but them and their realisation that all their friends in the war have died is a truly harrowing moment. All the mindless optimism we've seen thus far is replaced with an understandable fear of the same fate happening to them. As for Edmund, he needs no such revelation. We instead learn about his military experience, once saving Douglas Hague, and his disappointment in seeing enemies who are capable of actually fighting back. He was shocked when he saw them do that.

He tries to go for another last-ditch effort to get out by pretending to be mad. Melchett and Darling come calling and tell George how he once knew soldiers to use the same method as what Edmund is doing and had them shot so Edmund is forced to backtrack on his plan. When he later calls Hague for help he is told to do it again but knows it's not going to work. "I believe the phrase rhymes with 'Clucking Bell'," says Edmund.

The episode is entirely character-driven drama and it's an extremely brave thing to do in a sitcom. I doubt any other show could pull this one off but here it works. Substituting laughs for tears is done perfectly here and it's a nice U-Turn from comedy to drama as the jokes are permitted to take a back seat, only showing up when the writers want your brain to stop readying the tears and save them for the end of the episode.

The scene when the setting switches to HQ is when you know the end is nigh as Melchett comes to Darling and gives him a summons to Blackadder's trench. "But I don't want to...!" Darling tries to tell him but Melchett is not getting the point: "Goodbye, Captain Kevin Darling." The sound of military drumbeats and the sudden bright light with his driver's silhouette is a moment you will never forget and is probably the saddest thing you'll ever see -- Until the final scene of the episode. The writing is indescribably wonderful here.

The ending scene is the home of the true emotional heartbeat of things though as Darling arrives in the trench. He and Edmund have had a mutual disdain for each other since the beginning but it's all gone now and replaced with a mutual respect. The two actors are able to make you feel the new feeling of respect for each others' characters and that's not an easy thing to do for even Hollywood's finest, yet two TV actors manage it here.

Then we come to the push with several one-liners here that punctuate the tension and represent what's being felt by the soldiers.

"Wouldn't want to face the machine guns without this stick."

"There's a nasty splinter on that ladder, somebody could hurt themselves on that."

"Whatever your plan was it can't've been worse than my plan of pretending to be mad. Who'd've noticed another mad-man around here?"

"The Great War: 1915-1917."

Then they go out of the trench and the tears come out of your eyes. The slow-motion, the piano version of the theme tune, the booming sounds as it fades out and finally a shot of a field of poppies with birdsong in the background.

It's a shame IMDb only allows up to ten out of ten since this deserves at least 1000/10. What more can I say?!

The day of the big push arrives.

It feels wrong to say that I enjoyed this episode given the subject matter, but there are moments of top drawer comedy for a large percentage of it, but when it ends with that powerful sequence I always get a lump in my throat.

This is the episode when the writing of Curtis and Elton transitions from hilarious to poignant. I feel it starting to change from the early scene when Baldrick starts questioning the futility of war and the look Blackadder gives Melchett who explains why he won't be joining his men in battle. A real sense of impending doom kicks in as we see Melchett give the pen-pushing Captain Darling his commission for the front line. Everything from the moment Darling arrives in Blackadder's trench onwards is heartbreaking to watch. Four great comic actors wonderfully portray the final moments of these characters condemned to death in one of the most tragic wars in history.

Rowan Atkinson, Tony Robinson, Hugh Laurie, Tim McInnerny and Stephen Fry are all brilliant.

A fitting end to what is for me the greatest comedy series in BBC history.

Edmund Blackadder spends much of Season 4 comically trying to "get out of" the war, or the front lines. His efforts are for naught. By the end of this episode the mood has changed, the laughter stops, and he does what all soldiers do: scared to death, but you go anyway. They all do, even Captain Darling, who didn't realize he would be in this position and has had the rug yanked out from under him at the last minute. I discovered the Blackadder series in the early '90s and watched all four seasons. At that time I was living with my grandparents, and when my grandfather and I were watching this particular episode, and Baldrick questions why there has to be a war, my grandfather, a homebound WW2 vet, said, "Good point."

When they go over the top and the film is slowed down, and the piano is playing those end notes, it seems very final. The red poppies on the field are a quiet testimony, as to any battle, in any war.

Apparently the Brits adored this final episode and the way it ended. As for me, it left me totally depressed and completely unsatisfied. And, by the incredibly high score for this particular episode, I assume I am in the distinct minority.

This episode is about the troops going 'over the top'--i.e., to make an insane dash across no-man's land only to die pointlessly in a hail of bullets, bombs, mines and shrapnel. My question is this...how is this a subject for a comedy?! There is an attempt at comedy when Blackadder decides to pretend he's crazy in order to avoid an almost certain death. But, the plan is a failure and Blackadder is screwed.

Along the way there are jokes about Baldrick's coffee which consists of mud, phlegm and dandruff. This sort of joke, in my opinion, is getting a bit old to say the least. In fact, this is THE problem for this final episode...there simply isn't much of anything funny throughout the show aside from Baldrick's insanely pathetic poetry. It all ends with some maudlin talk about how the war sucks...and then they all go off to meet their deaths. Wow...what fun...as well as the reason season 4 is my least favorite of the Blackadder saga.

I'm not a huge 'Blackadder' fan, unlike many millions of people in the UK and across the world. I am however a fan of this final episode of the show.

The reason for this is that it can easily stand alone from the rest of the series, and indeed the whole saga, and manages to combine an awful lot of wit, with actually some very unexpectedly poignant moments. This show throughout its run tackled the hardship of war, but in this episode in particular they really went to great lengths to treat it seriously.

If you ever only see one episode of this show, make it this one.

'Blackadder Goes Forth' was absolutely and without a doubt my favourite of the series, and 'Goodbyeeee' has to be one of the best episodes of any programme ever. The last ten minutes I was sitting in total silence, apart from Melchett and his moustache net, the last 'funny' moment of the series. Even though they die at the end of every series, I still thought there was a chance that they could survive, until Darling thought the war was going to end there in 1917, and then you realise that they are doomed. Satirical, well written and very, very poignant, this is an absolutely amazing episode - made all the more poignant because it could easily have been real.

I would rate this episode with 20/10 stars if possible. The final dialogue between Blackadder and Baldrick is by far the best antiwar message on film I' ve ever seen. All the previous episodes are leading to this climax. Even the fact that Hugh Laurie's character finally admits of being afraid of going over the top is magnificent. Plus Captain Darling finally being on the front line side by side with Blackadder.

The final scene with the poppy fields reminds us of the famous poem and by itself makes tears run down our cheeks for all those brave people on both sides, since none of them was responsible for the war.