Blackadder (Seasons 1–4)

Blackadder (1983) is a BBC sitcom you can watch online on iFILM, with Rowan Atkinson as the scheming, perpetually thwarted Edmund Blackadder weaving his way through British history. Each run drops the name into a new era, from the mud of the Middle Ages to the trenches of the Great War.

One season he's a cowardly prince, the next a slick courtier under Elizabeth I, then a butler, then a lieutenant facing the front. Two companions stick with him throughout: the dim Lord Percy and the filthy, faithful dogsbody Baldrick, whose "cunning plans" always end in disaster. Tim McInnerny, Tony Robinson, and later Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie turn English history into a parade of razor-sharp insults.

Richard Curtis and Ben Elton wrote it, sharpening every line to a fine point. The humor runs dry, bitter, and thoroughly British, and the closing scene of the wartime season is still called one of the most gut-punching endings in TV comedy. Stream every season of Blackadder online on iFILM.