There are just some things in this world that are so wonderful they take your breath away. These don’t have to always be the glorious, the heroic, or the beautiful, they can be something of pure delight and fun as this complete series set of Jeeves & Wooster from A& E, starring Stephen Fry as the incomparable Jeeves and Hugh Laurie as the good hearted Bertie Wooster.
If you have never watched this series, never read the P. G. Wodehouse original stories, then you have missed out on some of the funniest adventures of the early 20th century “tweedy elite” of Britain. Now you can rectify that hole in your humor education with the boxed set of the complete series.
Bertie Wooster (Hugh Laurie) is a modern young aristocratic gentleman of the early 20th century. He is well meaning, good hearted, but as the British say a bit thick in the noggin. Jeeves (Stephen Fry) is Wooster’s valet, a gentleman’s gentleman, who with wit, resourcefulness, humor and intelligence saves Bertie from all kinds of troubles. Bertie is beset with problems arising from having too much time and too much money and above all too kind a disposition.
Jeeves has to work diligently to clean up Bertie’s mistaken intentions, or plans. It is wonderful to watch these two exceptional actors become Jeeves & Wooster and make audiences believe every second of their wild escapades.
There are Four Seasons of Jeeves & Wooster on eight dvd’s with 23 episodes. These provide over 19 hours of playing time. Also included in the set ia a P. G. Wodehouse biography and filmography. Great attention was paid to getting the settings, and the speech correct for this time in history.
Bertie’s Aunt Agatha lives in Victorian splendour, while Bertie’s own living quarters reflect the modern look of art deco. The clothes, the hairstyles, and the sets are perfect backdrops for the mannerisms that are great fun to watch, and the names of Bertie’s “set” of friends are enough to send one into a fit of giggles. Like Dickens, Wodehouse captured character in a person’s name.
There is Tuppy Glossop, who is forever falling in love but not always with the right girl, there is Augustus (Gussie) Fink-Nottle a young man enthralled by newts, but still trying to win the hand of the wealthy Madeline Bassett, and then we see Jeeves at the point of deserting Bertie to go to work for Chuffy Chuffnel, because Bertie has taken up playing the trombone…..very badly. Bertie becomes involved with Pauline, the daughter of a wealthy American J Washburn Stoker, and is almost trapped into matrimony, something that always seems to plague the young man.
Thank goodness for the good sense of Jeeves, who comes to the rescue with plans that make everyone happy. Nicely packaged, this set has each season’s discs in their own plastic keep case, and the back cover contains program notes for the episodes in that season.
Whether or not you are an Anglophile, or have been introduced to Jeeves & Wooster this set belongs in all collections that appreciate accurate historic representations of society, but most of all a very special type of humor.
Jeeves & Wooster: The Complete Series is now available at Amazon . As of yet, there is not a release date for the UK. Visit the DVD database for more information.
Your Talkback on this Story