Datasets:

amkhrjee
/

blackadder-conversation

license: cc-by-nc-4.0
language:
  - en
task_categories:
  - text-generation
tags:
  - conversational
  - dialogue
  - character-roleplay
  - blackadder
pretty_name: Blackadder Conversation
size_categories:
  - 1K<n<10K
configs:
  - config_name: default
    data_files:
      - split: train
        path: blackadder.jsonl

Blackadder Chat Dataset

A chat-style instruction dataset distilled from the full Blackadder TV scripts (all four series). Each example pairs a line of dialogue with Edmund Blackadder's reply, so a model fine-tuned on it learns to answer in the persona of Rowan Atkinson's character.

Files

File	Description
`season_1.txt` … `season_4.txt`	Raw fan transcripts, one file per series.
`download_raw.sh`	Fetches and renames the raw scripts (see Source).
`prepare.py`	(scaffold)
`blackadder.jsonl`	The dataset. 2,581 user→assistant dialogue pairs.

The dataset is generated by ../data.py:

python data.py    # run from the repo root; writes data/blackadder.jsonl

Format

blackadder.jsonl is JSON Lines: one example per line. Each line is a JSON object with a messages list of two turns — the line spoken just before Edmund (user), and Edmund's response (assistant):

{"messages": [
  {"role": "user", "content": "Edna, fight you with us on the morrow?"},
  {"role": "assistant", "content": "Er, oh goodness, no! No, I thought I'd fight with the enemy!"}
]}

Statistics

	Pairs
Series 1	628
Series 2	669
Series 3	711
Series 4	573
Total	2,581

How examples are built

For every line Edmund speaks, the script emits one pair: the assistant turn is Edmund's line, and the user turn is the line spoken immediately before it by another character.

Key decisions made while parsing the (messy, hand-typed) transcripts:

Edmund is matched by all of his aliases, resolved per series. The scripts abbreviate speakers differently in each episode, and the abbreviations conflict — e.g. B means Baldrick in series 2 & 3, not Blackadder. The alias sets used are:

Series Edmund labels

1 Edmund, EBA, BA, E

2 Edmund, Blackadder, BA, E

3 Edmund, Blackadder, E

4 Edmund, Blackadder
The user turn is the nearest preceding other-character line. Intervening stage directions are skipped, and consecutive Edmund lines are merged into a single assistant turn.
Stage directions are stripped — [...], (...), and {...} (one episode uses braces) — including directions that wrap across script lines.
Episode boundaries (Sharing is caring! + intro paragraph) and the per-episode cast legends (B: Baldrick) are detected and excluded.
Wrapped dialogue and scene narration are not mistaken for new speaker turns; a line is only treated as a new speaker when its label is short and capitalised.

Series	Edmund labels
1	`Edmund`, `EBA`, `BA`, `E`
2	`Edmund`, `Blackadder`, `BA`, `E`
3	`Edmund`, `Blackadder`, `E`
4	`Edmund`, `Blackadder`

The parser is heuristic, so a small amount of residual noise remains (e.g. a rare line where two characters share one transcript line keeps an inline Name: tag). See the docstring and comments in ../data.py for details.

Source

Raw scripts are the "Blackadder Full Scripts (Rowan Atkinson)" dataset on Kaggle, originally from Blackadderquotes.com. Re-download with:

cd data && ./download_raw.sh