 The opening titles are accompanied by a mock @-@ Elizabethan arrangement of Howard Goodall 's Blackadder theme played on a recorder and an electric guitar , and feature a black snake slithering about on a marble table . The snake , noncompliant to the wishes of its handler , is eventually removed and replaced with something related to the episode title , which in this series is always a single noun . The opening ominous string crescendo and imagery are a parody of the opening credits of the 1976 BBC television adaptation of Robert Graves ' I , Claudius . 
