...with Rik Mayall as Rasputin

Blackadder could have returned with a series set at the time of the Russian Revolution, star Rowan Atkinson has revealed.

A planned – called Redadder – would have placed him and Baldrick working for the Tsar’s court – with and Rik Mayall as Rasputin.

‘They had blue stripes around their caps and then the Revolution happened… and after the Revolution they are in exactly the same office and they have red caps,’  Atkinson said at the BFI & Radio Times Television Festival.

‘It was quite a good idea and it was filmic in scale.’

However the idea, mooted 20 years ago, never got beyond a script treatment stage, ‘for all sorts of complicated reasons’, Atkinson said.

Talk of a fifth Blackadder series has been around since the fourth ended in 1989.

The idea that got closest to being made was The Blackadder Five, about a 1960s pop group of that name, with Atkinson as the lead singer and a drummer called Bald Rick.

In 2015, Baldrick actor Tony Robinson fuelled hopes of a return when he said: ’I do think a new series of Blackadder is on the cards. I have spoken to virtually all the cast about this now.’

However, Atkinson nixed that idea this weekend, saying: ‘There are no plans to do anything.’

Published: 9 Apr 2017