Taped on 20 June 1982,[1] it features the original incarnation of the character Edmund Blackadder, played by Rowan Atkinson.

The pilot episode was broadcast for the first time on UKTV's Gold channel, on 15 June 2023 to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the show.

In the version of The Black Adder which was eventually televised in 1983, the setting is shifted back some 100 years to 1485, and the King is clearly identified as King Richard IV, a fictional successor to Richard III who rules England with his Queen, the fictional Gertrude of Flanders, during a rewritten period of history.

The rest of the cast (Atkinson, Tim McInnerny as Percy and Elspet Gray as the Queen) were reunited for the commissioned series.

The episode opens with a rendition of the now-familiar Blackadder theme, followed by an on-screen narrative text: It is Europe, 400 years ago.

He is clearly unhappy about the task he has been given, which is to arrange the festivities for both the Queen's birthday and the return of the Scottish hero Dougal McAngus to the court.

Percy warns that the King will disinherit Edmund if he thinks he has deliberately killed McAngus, so they agree to make it look like an accident.

Leaving the stage, Edmund instructs Percy and Baldrick to remove the safety hook from the gallows, and warns them that whatever happens, if the Scotsman lives, they will die.

He tries to stop the hanging from off-stage by cutting the noose with a spear, but it fails, so in a last-ditch attempt, he throws a sheet over his head, and enters the stage as the ghost of the Prince.

He pleads mercy for the Scotsman, but Percy and Baldrick, mindful of his previous threat, are determined to carry out the execution.

A comic fight sequence ensues, which ends with Edmund inadvertently hanging McAngus himself, but then holding him up to stop him choking.

The final shot is of the family coat of arms, inscribed with the motto: Veni Vidi Castratavi Illegitimos ("I came, I saw, I castrated the bastards").

Richard Curtis is said to have thought the character should be more complex for the initial series, than the swaggering lead as seen in the pilot (and future episodes).

In 2010, The Guardian reflected on this, noting that it was "an interesting example of getting it right first time":[5] The 1982 pilot to Blackadder – or The Black Adder as it was then – is almost exactly what the second series turned out to be.

But when the first series came to air, it was set in the Middle Ages, Rowan Atkinson played an idiot and Baldrick was the brains of the operation.

It's notable that the show only really started to pick up traction when it reverted to the format of the pilot.The pilot episode is not available on DVD nor had it, until June 2023, been broadcast on television, although some scenes were featured in the 25th anniversary special Blackadder Rides Again.