The pilot episode of Blackadder will be shown on Thursday

Radio Times makes a big fuss about the never-screened pilot episode of Blackadder, which is being shown by Gold (not a Freeview channel) on Thursday, along with a documentary, at nine in the evening.

It's billed as The Lost Pilot, but in reality it's been knocking about on the internet for years.

A lot is different from the comedy series we know, including the name it was made under: The Black Adder. Rowan Atkinson and Tim McInnerny are there, and so is Baldrick. But he's not played by Tony Robinson.

Talking to Radio Times, Robinson is measured about its quality:

Robinson was delighted – and frustrated – to observe that the pilot has “flashes that are really, really good”. (Indeed, Curtis and Atkinson reused some dialogue in later episodes.) Though he warns viewers scene one is “tedious”, he’s glad Gold has chosen to show it warts and all.

“There’s a desperate attempt to explain the whole concept and like any first scene ever, it gets a blue pencil through it very quickly. It just shows you how inspiration travels – you can start off with something ghastly and then you make the leap, and suddenly you’ve got something interesting.”

And he adds that in those days pilot episodes were allowed not to be perfect:

“Nowadays, a pilot isn't something that allows you to experiment, to throw away the bits that didn't work and beef up the good bits. It’s become something to prove to the commissioning editor how wonderful the whole thing is, and that's a terribly constraining influence.”

I was too old to be part of the generation that worshipped Blackadder: in fact I enjoyed the first series more than was fashionable and found the later ones in danger of being a little too pleased with themselves.

Anyway, there are a couple of interesting faces in the pilot. John Savident - I said John Savident - from A Clockwork Orange and Coronation Street, and Simon Gipps-Kent.

As a child and teen actor Gipps-Kent was everywhere on television in the Seventies, but he kept his boyish image too long and failed to make the transition to adult roles.

He was found dead from a heroin overdose in 1987, aged 28. If it had been shown when it was made in 1982, The Black Adder would have been one of his last screen appearances.