No: Bertie’s {almost} always the narrator: he proposes growing a moustache or wearing a check suit, and all we hear is the report of Jeeves’ deadpan objections, plus Bertie’s editorial determination not to be ruled by his valet - he invariably capitulates, of course.
For those who haven’t read the books - what are you damn well waiting for? Wodehouse was the greatest prose stylist of the last century, and the only writer who can make me laugh out loud in cold print. Good as the TV show is*, it can’t begin to touch the Master.
*Sell your first-born to watch this show: it’s impossible to imagine Wodehouse interpreted better, and Fry and Laurie, as well as being a superb comic team prior, were born to play their characters. And the theme music and title animations rock.
so what I’m hearing here is that some of you think there may be some marginal utility in buying these things?
Interesting that I’d got the actors/characters mixed up. Any thing I’ve seen Fry in, he’s just seemed so flamboyant, while Laurie seems more restrained. I thought Fry would do the blithering Bertie, and Laurie the more reserved Jeeves.
I’m assuming you haven’t seen “Blackadder the Third” in which Laurie plays an even bigger imbecile than Bertie, who also happens to be Prince Regent of England.
As has been stated, the key conceit of the books (except for one, I think) is that the reader only gets Bertie’s perspective. Bertie is the narrator and everything is seen through his eyes. And you get absolutely no insight into Jeeves’s thought processes, as should be. Jeeves, as a perfect gentleman’s gentleman, never lets on to what he is thinking. But, his actions do clue you in to what he’s doing.
A viewer should never be able to tell from Jeeves’s words or expressions that he thinks Bertie is a nincompoop. He should be absolutely opaque to the observer. The only hint we have that Jeeves absolutely hates Bertie’s sartorial choices is his insistence that he change them.
The one exception is the story in which Bertie is made to speak before an audience of schoolgirls. There we get the story from Jeeves’s perspective and it shows how thoroughly self-interested and ruthless he is.
No one beats Hugh Laurie as a blithering idiot. He made his bones as Prince George (the future George IV) in Black Adder III and as Bertie Wooster.
It’s strange that for general American audiences he’s only known for his grim-faced portrayals in House and that Jane Austen one. His real talent is comedy. When it comes to serious drama, it always seems to me that he’s trying too hard.
Fry is also a natural goof. Which is why I find his Jeeves to be insufficiently restrained.
OK, so after this discussion, when Mr. S got home last night I had to pop some Bertie in the player for our before-bed viewing. Which reminded me to come back here and tell the J&W novices to watch the mirrors. This show can make you laugh from just the camera angles! The best example is in the one where Stiffy Byng catches Bertie & Jeeves in her room.
There’s also the story where Bertie overhears Jeeves giving tips to the fellow who’s filling in while Jeeves goes on his annual holiday. Jeeves states that the locum will “find Mr. Wooster mentally negligible.”
Also, I don’t think that Jeeves hates all of Bertie’s sartorial choices. Rather, I think he is simply a bit more conservative than Bertie. By and large they get along well, but it’s Bertie’s occasional forays into the unconventional that trigger discontent - purple sox, the Coolidge special, etc. Plus the banjo. (And who could blame Jeeves over that?!?)
He and Imelda Staunton (who was the extremely silly Mrs. Palmer) also played a more serious married couple in 1992’s Peter’s Friends – and, oh look! There’s Stephen Fry again!
The Fry/Laurie/Emma Thompson etc crowd all went to Cambridge University together.
There have been a few generations of British comedians and actors who all passed through the Footlights Drama Club at the same time, and went on to collaborate together eg the Goodies, a couple of the Pythons.
That makes their appearance in The Young Ones episode, titled “Bambi”, in which they are the opposing school (Footlights College) in the University Challenge against Scumbag College.
Hugh Laurie played Lord Monty, Stephen Fry played Lord Snot and someone will have to help me with Emma Thompson’s character. I haven’t seen it in a while.
[QUOTE=Nutty Bunny]
That makes their appearance in The Young Ones episode, titled “Bambi”, in which they are the opposing school (Footlights College) in the University Challenge against Scumbag College even funnier.
[qUOTE]
That sentence makes a bit more sense now…hopefully. :rolleyes:
