TV/film adaptations

In which I am particularly interested in DVD copies of Wodehouse adaptations. I have watched all but one episode of the Hugh Laurie/Stephen Fry Jeeves and Wooster series. Love it!

Anything else out there that I'm missing? Blandings adaptations? Other?

I do see on Netflix a DVD with the titles "Thank You, Jeeves" and "Step Lively, Jeeves." Looks like films from the '30s. Anybody seen these?

There are DVDs of 'Wodehouse Playhouse', adaptations of various of his short stories, and all featuring John Alderton and Pauline Collins.

I remember enjoying many of the series when originally broadcast, and thought about buying the DVDs. However, the price, at £110 at Amazon seems a bit steep. (By contrast, of course, the 'Jeeves and Wooster' DVDs are an absolute snip at £12 - no home should be without a set!)

Ah! Thanks. I can't afford to buy them (though the complete series is cheaper at Amazon US, $72), so I'll put them on my Netflix queue.

I should dearly like to see again some of the Jeeves and Wooster TV series dating from 1965 to 1967 (heavens, how that ages one!) with Dennis Price as Jeeves, Ian Carmichael as Bertie, and Derek Nimmo as Bingo Little. I wonder how well they age, and how they compare with Fry and Laurie.

As I recall, Wodehouse himself warmly commended the series.

OK, so its not a TV/film adaptation, but BBC Radio 4 will be broadcasting a two-part radio adaptation of Summer Lightning starting on Sunday July 4. Episodes will be available to listen to for up to two weeks after they are aired at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qfz6/episodes/upcoming

What fun! Thanks, digifish!

For more information about the Carmichael / Price series, see the BFI website here:
http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/478555/
The good news is that they have some clips and a complete episode.
The bad news is that, for copyright reasons, private individuals can't look!
The good news is that it seems relatively easy to see them via libraries.

I recently watched my way through all of the Fry & Laurie series via Netflix and then moved on to the Wodehouse Playhouse. I found the Fry and Laurie both brilliantly done and laugh out loud funny, but I am sad to say the Wodehouse Playhouse seemed rather flat by comparison.

And thanks for the heads-up on Summer Lightning, I just finished reading it last week!

I've watched the complete Jeeves & Wooster series by Fry & Laurie. I loved it. Both of them are so good in their roles. They're just perfect. Whenever i read any Jeeves & Wooster book I can imagine them as if they're acting out the part i'm reading.

#9> I TOTALLY agree with you!

I have the Fry & Laurie DVD set. Just love them.

It's odd, but my introduction to Jeeves & Wooster was through audio productions (Dinsdale Landen reading Much Obliged, Jeeves and the Richard Briers/Michael Hordern BBC production of Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit - even Terry-Thomas). I was looking forward to the Fry & Laurie series because I was already a fan via Black Adder (their comedy series hadn't arrived on our shores yet), but was not only disappointed but thought they had completely misunderstood Wodehouse's humour. They rushed through his lines like they were trying to cram as many words into as short a space as possible, instead of savoring the wit in each and every line. I couldn't make it through the series and will definitely never watch it again. Am I the only one who feels this way?

>12 jlbattis:
I think we have to give Fry & Laurie (and their team) credit for knowing what would work for a 1990s TV audience: what they did wasn't pure Wodehouse, and it certainly didn't fit my mental image of Jeeves and Bertie, but it was great television. Many new readers came to Wodehouse through seeing them.

The sort of wordplay Wodehouse uses seems to transfer pretty well to the radio or in live theatre, where the audience has all its attention on the words, but TV is a different kind of experience. Not least because it gets a very broad audience: a lot of Wodehouse's jokes rely on cultural references that many TV viewers simply wouldn't have been able to follow in real time. The Radio 4 audience who listened to the Hordern / Briers adaptations are mostly people who understand the rules of cricket and do the Torygraph crossword, and they weren't in a hurry to go anywhere, so the production could squeeze every last drop out of the text without fear of alienating or baffling the listeners.

I think your analysis is right, thorold. I was certainly happier with the Carmchael/Price pairing as far as my mental images go. Ian Carmichael was a little long in the tooth for Bertie but played the silly ass effortlessly. Price had a slightly louche demeanour which was, perhaps, inappropriate for a gentleman's gentleman but we never really learn what he gets up to at the Junior Ganymede (one can draw one's own conclusions about the name of the club). Certainly Jeeves never fails to manipulate situations to his own advantage, even if that is only being permitted to bin an offensive pair of socks.

>13 thorold:
Ditto abbotthomas.
And I obviously came to the series prejudiced: I had not only internalised the tempo of the delivery through exposure to those audio-only productions, but (as also happens with text-only immersion) I had set mental images of the characters I couldn't shake.
And I went into Fry & Laurie with the highest expectations. I should probably set all that baggage aside and try it again... Who knows what the passage of a few years can do?
Thanks for the feedback.

>14 abbottthomas:
Bertie's age and Jeeves's disinterestedness are classic examples of the sort of questions that Wodehouse was able to leave open, but that have to be answered in a TV production. As is the time-period of the setting: Wodehouse throws in casual references to everything from Billy Sunday and the British Empire Exhibition to CND marches, but TV producers seem to have to settle for making Bertie a young man with the manners and attitudes of the 1890s living in the 1930s...

>16 thorold: I must pay more attention to the continuity in the Jeeves/Wooster stories as I re-read them. PGW wrote about the pair for not far off 50 years and I have never noticed any evidence of significant ageing in either. Off the top of my head things which place their world firmly in the inter-war years are pinching policemen's helmets on Boat Race night and talk of hopping into the two-seater, and then there's Roderick Spode and his Black Shorts (or were they brown?) but, as you say, the edges are fuzzy.

I can't recall any mention of the Great War in the stories. Bertie might just have missed it but Jeeves should have been conscripted unless he is considerably older than usually represented

When I realized Hugh Laurie played House, M.D., I fully believed it was someone else named Hugh Laurie, because I just could not reconcile that that person was Bertie Wooster.

>18 riani1: That's hilarious! Though I wasn't aware of A Bit of Fry and Laurie in real time, they were always there, in a film or two, some BBC productions, and of course Black Adder. And then there's the serviceable American accent to throw everyone off....

When I first heard that Fry and Laurie were going to be Jeeves and Bertie, I assumed Laurie would be playing Jeeves: I couldn't imagine someone as big and bumptious as Stephen Fry making a convincing valet, but Laurie seemed to be the natural straightman who would be good at shimmering in and out of visibility. Just be thankful I'm not a casting director!

I love the show, but feel that a lot is lost, necessarily, with authors like Wodehouse. I think the same is true for Terry Pratchett. Pratchett actually translates worse to film, I feel.

I think Hugh Laurie makes a wonderful Bertie, even if that is not how I originally pictured him. I think he does a good job of capturing his innocence and good humour. And Jeeves, well, I just have a hard time picturing him any other way now, and just rewrite the story in my head so he always looks like Fry.

One thing that strikes me in the books is that Bertie seems to be more cognizant that Jeeves is often playing him in matters of wardrobe and facial hair, and he consciously chooses his capitulations in recognition of sterling service. On TV, Bertie sometimes seems truly oblivious to a greater degree.