Blackadder is based on Edmund, the antagonist of William Shakespeare's play "King Lear": a scheming illegitimate son of a king who plots to take the crown for himself.
According to Rowan Atkinson, he had no idea how to play Blackadder right up to the point where the cameras were rolling for the first time; he didn't even know what voice to use for the character.
The series was primarily shot at Alnwick Castle, Northumberland.
This first season had the largest budget in the series, with a multitude of extras and props (horses, armour, etc) and on-location shooting at actual medieval locations. Rowan Atkinson has described shooting as being extravagant: "It cost a million pounds for the six episodes, a lot of money to spend... it looked great, but it wasn't as consistently funny as we would have liked." In partial consequence, the later shows had their budgets, casts and sets scaled down.
Rowan Atkinson and Richard Curtis came up with the idea of a historical sitcom during work on Not the Nine O'Clock News (1979).