Search - Jeeves & Wooster: The Complete First Season, Volume 1 on DVD

Fry and Laurie - The Legend Continues

James D. Marfia | Grand Rapids, Mi USA | 06/16/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Nowadays, of course, Hugh Laurie is famous worldwide as House, the dyspeptic doctor of NO bedside manner, whose genius the hospital cannot live without. But long ago, in a television galaxy far away, he was merely half of the Brit comedy duo of Fry and Laurie. Somewhere between those (truly excellent) sketches and universal fame came this brilliant rendering of the legendary comic novels of P. G. Wodehouse, featuring Hugh Laurie as Bertie Wooster and Stephen Fry as the unflappable, ever capable, Jeeves.

Wooster: "I say, Jeeves - do you know everything?"

Jeeves (after a considerate pause): "I really don't know, sir."

From our vantage, it seems incredible that neither of these two wanted the casting, at first. Not that they feared typecasting, no - they actually feared that they could not live up to the iconic stature of Wodehouse's quintessentially Edwardian pairing of a useless upper-class English twit and his urbane, enormously capable valet. Flapdoodle, I must say - and poppycock. Just as no one would think of replacing Amos or Andy, Abbott or Costello, Desi or Lucy, Frasier or Niles, Fry and Laurie have nailed Jeeves and Wooster for all eternity. And the cast chosen to surround them is spot on, as well.

It is impossible, utterly impossible, to select a scene from this gemlike first season to reproduce in text. One might as well attempt to regenerate a Kings' Singers concert on this page... To this day, whenever I replay the very first minutes of the very first episode, I am as bowled over as ever by the first fifteen minutes - and it only gets better from there. Indeed, I would rank the introduction of Jeeves, with Laurie's pitch-perfect, ABSOLUTELY WORDLESS, rendering of a young man's hangover, with any five minutes of silent comedy ever filmed: the Marx Brothers' mirror scene, Lucy Arnaz's chocolate factory, Niles Crane's losing battle with the flatiron.

I cannot recommend this set highly enough to those who enjoy their humor with a dash of wit and subtlety."