Rik Mayall: Magnificent B’Stard is a homage to the man and an elegy for what you have to presume were the lost youths of most of the viewing audience. I don’t know what the current youth would make of it. I suppose they’re not watching television anyway, so the question’s moot.
Plus, of course, it doesn’t matter. This is 90 minutes of television for us – the generation that grew up with Mayall on screen as Rick the Poet (“This is my angriest poem – Theatre!”), then self-styled investigative reporter from and mostly in Redditch, Kevin Turvey, then in The Young Ones as anarchist sociology student Rick and on through its less wildly popular follow-up Filthy Rich & Catflap. Then there was his unforgettable turn as Lord Flashheart in Blackadder II (and as the horndog lord’s equally priapic descendant Squadron Commander Flashheart in Blackadder Goes Forth); the unexpected pivot towards a more restrained demonstration of his comic talents as oleaginous, ruthless, corrupt, entirely fictional Tory MP Alan B’Stard in Marks and Gran’s brilliant The New Statesman; a Hollywood punt as Drop Dead Fred; then the huge success of Bottom as a sitcom and a live show throughout the 90s until a terrible quad biking accident in 1998 trimmed his sails.
