Blackadder II - Blackadder, Season 2

It is difficult to decide whether I prefer Season 2 or Season 3 of Blackadder, but one thing I know for certain is that in Blackadder II, Rowan Atkinson is hot. That's right, I said it. Suddenly he has sex appeal, something which I never would have thought possible. It is not just his charm, which I do associate with him; instead, I believe it has something to do with his facial hair and those renaissance breeches and hoes.

We find Edmund Blackadder (Atkinson) in Renaissance England, a friend of Queen Elizabeth (played by the delightful Miranda Richardson). Here, he is very clever, easily outwitting his servant Baldrick (Tony Robinson), whose family has clearly become more dense over the years. Percy (Tim McInnerny), meanwhile, is delightfully foppish, and the addition of Stephen Fry as Lord Melchett completes a dynamic ensemble.

If such talent were not enough, the writing too has improved. Certainly, some of the humour is still over the top, but the brilliance of weaving the obvious with the witty as Blackadder pursues a young woman called Bob, whom he believes to be a young man, will make you laugh for days. Sure, that didn't start happening on stage until the restoration, but who doesn't associate the beginnings of drag with Shakespeare - when men fell in love with young men whom they believed to be young women.

The best episode of the season is the last, as is often the case, in which Hugh Laurie makes an appearance as Prince Ludwig the Indestructible. A terrific master of disguise, he surprises both Blackadder and Lord Melchett with revelations of previous encounters with them - none of them are what you would expect, and all of them are hilarious.

How can you go wrong with such a combination of wit, talent, and sexy clothes?