Blandings

When the brilliant and inspired Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie did PG Wodehouse's "Jeeves & Wooster" in the 1990's it was a pure joy. Because they didn't appear to be acting. They seemed to somehow miraculously become those two characters. You couldn't see the strings.

The complete opposite is true of the BBC's new six-part adaptation of PG Wodehouse's Blandings Castle stories. As Lord Emsworth, Timothy Spall does little but put on a posh voice and dig in, like a knackered old repertory company actor playing Toad of Toad Hall for the umpteenth time, in yet another tatty production of Wind in the Willows.

As Emsworth's sister Connie, Jennifer Saunders looks equally bored and uninterested, as if she's hurriedly learned the lines for a quickie PG Wodehouse sketch in an episode of French & Saunders.

Worst of all is Jack Farthing as the idiot son Freddie. His upper class accent is about as convincing as a first year American drama student auditioning to play all the Hugh Laurie parts in a bad remake of Blackadder.

Farthing's on-screen strategy appears to be to pull as many stupid grimaces as possible, bump into the furniture, fall over, and hope for the best.

The only member of the company who isn't dismally miscast is Mark Williams, who's Beach the Butler is neatly underplayed, nicely observed, and completely believable – standing head and shoulders above the surrounding gaggle of tiresome, stereotyped, phone-it-in actors.

The pig is good. Very good. His flat, upturned nose can't help but put me in mind of Kevin Bacon (No pun intended. A genuine, physical similarity that is undoubtedly worth pointing out.) Blandings' early evening, weekend time slot makes me wonder just exactly who the target audience are intended to be. The poor slapstick and semi-Pantomine style appear to be aimed at a younger audience. Chuckle Brothers meets Downton Abbey? Yet that age group's unfamiliarity with the Wodehouse genre would surely only lead to utter confusion and bewilderment. I know Wodehouse pretty well and it left me cold.

The only thing that made me laugh during the whole of the first two episodes was the thought of a couple of streetwise urban teenagers accidentally switching on to Blandings and fruitlessly trying to work out who these people were, and what the hell they were all on about. I will not be returning a third time to this particular crumbling pile.

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We should not, I think, judge Blandings by the standards of realistic contemporary comedy. I agree that characters do not seem realistic in some respects and that the acting and effects in Season 1 are more artificially (Freddy's forelock rising and falling at the sight of a pretty female, for example), but both seasons have grown on me--I like them both. Both butlers Beach are wonderful, each in his own way. But both seasons are based on Wodehouse's brilliantly comedic language and absurd plots and unforgettably archetypal characters--plagues in the form of aunts/sisters, guardian-crossed lovers, butlers with more sense than their employers, frivolous young men who live for nightlife and fall in love with a succession of pretty young women, and leading male characters of the upper class who have a hobby-horse (in this case, the Empress) and are one cartload shy of a full load of fertilizer. I only wish there were 10 seasons of this delightful fluff.

I've been reading Wodehouse pretty much all my life. I love the lightness, the frothy confusion and the way he wove the characters into living, breathing people on the page. And as such, I approached the arrival of 'Blandings' with a mix of excitement and fear. Fear, because it's notoriously difficult to get Wodehouse from the page to the screen.

The first episode seemed to reinforce all those fears, presenting me with a show that bore little resemblance to those 'living breathing people' that my long association with Wodehouse had let loose inside my head. However, things were to change, and for the better....

Fry and Laurie's approach back in the 90s with Jeeves and Wooster was to throw every line out with gusto, and hope that, on occasion, some of them hit the mark. By and large they succeeded. This wasn't the approach with Blandings.

With Blandings, it's very much the character interaction that drives the show, and so it was as much the delivery as the dialogue that was going to make or break the show. And in the beginning, things looked bleak. However, as the series progressed, I did find myself warming more to the actors. Tim Spall plays Emsworth with a mix of muddle-headedness and down-trodden persecution, constantly trying to squirm out from under the thumb of Jennifer Saunders' Lady Constance. Mark Williams performance as Beach was surprisingly good, especially as Beach is described as 'stately' in the novels, and one thing that Williams isn't, is stately. Jack Farthing is air-headed, frivolous and spend-thrift as Freddie, and swings from annoying to endearing.

The other characters go a long way to supporting the main cast, especially Cyril Wellbeloved, Angus McAllister, and the slimy Baxter. There's also a stream of female visitors, some of which could grace my table anytime. Pandora and Monica Simmons were especially striking.

The dialogue was, on occasion, very good indeed, and strangely in keeping with what Wodehouse may have written, were he sitting down today to write Blandings for the first time.

Now the series has ended, I'm left hoping for a second to be commissioned, and will no doubt be paying for the DVD - and this is something I never thought I would be saying after the first episode.

I will easily fly in the face of recent opinion on this show. If you want Jeeves and Wooster, then just watch your old DVD:s. I'm sure the ambition was to make this series as funny, but even if it can't quite reach up to that level, it's still good quality entertainment.

We have great actors, relaxed performances, fun guests - and a huge fat pig:) Pretty happy right there:)

I'm not a Wodehouse purist or expert, but I still have a feeling he would have appreciated the efforts to make his writings worth checking out for a new generation. Give it it a shot, and don't be so jeevesed off!

I had high hopes for Blandings based on Jennifer Saunders' involvement. While she is quite good, the whole cast of regulars is excellent.

Unfortunately the first couple of episodes were just so-so and may have put off some reviewers who were in a rush to judgment when writing up their overly critical posts here. And there are a few occasional characters, like Baxter, who seem to not be quite on a par with the others, but their short-comings are more pronounced because the rest of the cast/characters are so excellent.

By the third and fourth episodes, the actors seem to have found their pace and settled very well into their characters. Timothy Spall is fantastic. Freddie, Beach, the maniacal gardener ... all of them are great in their roles and are laugh-out-loud funny.

Yes it is silly and yes it is quite different from the earlier Wodehouse inspired productions. If you want to see Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry playing Bertie and Jeeves, then this is not a rehash of the slower paced, repetitive, 1950's, I Love Lucy style Wodehouse that they did so well. If that's your cuppa' ... and I enjoyed that series too ... then by all means watch them. Comparing the two serves no useful purpose.