10 Great TV Shows With Awful First Seasons
3. Blackadder
Mr. Bean may be Rowan Atkinson's most widely known role, but it could be argued that his best is that of Edmund Blackadder. For four seasons the actor played four different iterations of the character across history, and three of them are outstanding.
The exception here is the painfully unfunny first season, almost unrecognisable against what followed.
It wasn't until Blackadder the Second that the series began its path to becoming a British comedy classic, with the introduction of Blackadder's pompous arrogance, and his relationship with the ever-stupid Baldrick. The third season, though not necessarily an outright improvement on the second, was a great success, before Blackadder Goes Fourth, the best outing of the lot.
It's no coincidence that things began to improve when Ben Elton joined as a writer, elevating the series at least ten-fold against a pedestrian and forgettable first effort. Much like The Clone Wars, the final episode is Blackadder's crowning moment, in what was its only real emotional beat, and one of the finest in the history of British comedy. Imagine being robbed of that because of a bad first season.