Search - Jeeves & Wooster - The Complete Series on DVD

Definitive rendition of the funniest books ever written

Robin Wolfson | Cameron Park, CA USA | 07/29/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Be warned: this is one of those semi-"literary" reviews in which I'm going to talk about Wodehouse, the Jeeves and Wooster series, and the literary heirs of Wodehouse, for those who think there's no such thing as enough comedy in the world.

P. G. Wodehouse ("Plum" to his friends) was the funniest man who ever set pen to paper. He lived to the ripe old age of ninety-three and wrote over ninety books, many featuring the amiable and well-meaning, if somewhat misguided, Bertie Wooster and his brainy manservant Jeeves. Although his work stretches from the late 1890s to the early 1970s, the rudeness of the outside world almost never intrudes and there are surprisingly few cultural references. Wodehouse's stories exist in a kind of eternal Eden of innocent lads and maids chasing each other around the garden and trying to avoid the various serpents trying to crash the party. His characters are almost exclusively from that most useless branch of society, the English moneyed class, and their problems are all silly ones: which witless man will win which brainless girl, and how Aunt Dahlia can steal a silver cow-creamer for her husband so that he'll give her the necessary funds to buoy up her ladies' journal "Milady's Boudoir."

And yet. . . And it's in the "and yet" that Wodehouse makes his mark as the most brilliant social satirist of all time. Unlike George Bernard Shaw, Wodehouse makes no grand stands, addresses no revolutionary agendas. Simply, quietly, and persistently, he takes aim at pretension, meanness, and cruelty by carrying it to its most absurd extent.

Wodehouse's humor is small, domestic, personal, and eternal. Of a man engaged to a bossy woman, he writes: "He might take the view that when the little [woman] made him sit up and beg and snap lumps of sugar off his nose, it was a compliment, really, because it showed that she was taking an interest." Of a particularly bad play: "One of the critics said he had perhaps seen it at a disadvantage because when he saw it the curtain was up." And of Jeeves's morning conversation with Bertie: "The English poet Herrick expressed the same sentiment when he suggested that we should gather rosebuds while we may. Your elbow is in the butter, sir." (All quotes here from "Jeeves and The Tie That Binds.")

Now, as for Fry and Laurie's rendition of Jeeves and Wooster: it is perfect. And bear in mind that, appearances to the contrary (because Fry and Laurie make it look so effortless), Jeeves and Wooster may be the two most difficult roles in all literature. Bertie must come across as amiable and well-meaning, if a trifle dim, but not a blithering idiot. David Niven tried, and it was a disaster. Jeeves is only slightly less challenging; while he must come across as brilliant and accommodating, he must do so with dignity, with only a minimum of condescension, and with a real fondness for Bertie, something like a mother hen for a slightly addlepated chick.

Fry and Laurie are prefect, as is, by the way, the excellent dramatization and the rest of the ensemble cast. Be warned, however, once you pick up Wodehouse, you'll be hooked forever. Fortunately, his output was prodigious, so you'll have plenty to read and reread, over and over and over. The books never pall; I've read many of them several times and they are always, as Wodehouse titled one of his books, "Something Fresh."

By way of literary genealogy, Wodehouse's stylistic heirs are Douglas Adams (of "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" fame), Joss Whedon (creator of Buffy, Angel, and the Firefly/Serenity series and film), and Hugh Laurie himself, whose first book "The Gun Seller" continues in the Wodehouse tradition. For example: "I hadn't actually planned on picking his brains, because, to be honest, they weren't properly ripe yet." Or the extraordinary line: ". . . there's an undeniable pleasure in stepping into an open-top sports car driven by a beautiful woman. It feels like you're climbing into a metaphor." And as for Joss Whedon, you can practically tell which Wodehouse books he was reading while writing Buffy. When Giles tells Xander: "I suppose there's a certain Machiavellian ingenuity to your transgression," and Xander replies, "I resent that. . . .Or possibly, thank you," they might have stepped right out of Wodehouse's "Full Moon." For his part, Douglas Adams wrote some of the most purely Wodehousian lines of all time, such as: "How do you feel?" "Like a military academy; bits of me keep passing out."

So if you want smart, talky, deliciously funny stuff, you can't do better than settling down with the Fry and Laurie's Jeeves and Wooster, apart, of course, from picking up any of Wodehouse's ninety-some books. Fry and Laurie, however, are a wonderful place to start."