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Jeeves and Wooster
1990 · TV series · 55 min episodes · 4 seasons
Created by Clive Exton
Jeeves and Wooster is a British comedy-drama series adapted by Clive Exton from P.G. Wodehouse's "Jeeves" stories. It aired on the ITV network from 1990 to 1993, starring Hugh Laurie as Bertie Wooster, a young gentleman with a "distinctive blend of airy nonchalance and refined gormlessness", and Stephen Fry as Jeeves, his improbably well-informed and talented valet. Wooster is a bachelor, a minor aristocrat and member of the idle rich. He and his friends, who are mainly members of The Drones Club, are extricated from all manner of societal misadventures by the indispensable valet, Jeeves. The stories are set in the United Kingdom and the United States in the 1930s.
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10 comments on Hacker News
I'm loving the Wodehouse references in this thread.
In case there are folks unaware of it, there is an excellent TV series called "Jeeves and Wooster" (Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie) -- highly recommended!
best reasoning I've heard for this is that English is subtext heavy, like Japanese due to the history of the aristocracy. The populace were in thrall to their feudal lords and the aristocracy as serfs and servant classes for so long, that being indirect has been embedded into the language as a defense mechanism to not upset the pay masters. We get the subtext but people new to our culture might not.
I remember a technological mess being present at work and my team lead bringing out the classic:
> it's not ideal is it?
or the classic Jeeves and Wooster valet/aristocrat relationship with Jeeves giving it the:
> as you say sir
> very good sir
with both statements being flexible but often being delivered with the dripping subtext of "yeah that's complete bollocks".[0]
Obviously this doesn't apply to the real working classes but then those types are not the sort to gain a STEM education.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s03Fq1nsbng
(The full scene is around 11:30 in the first episode and I think its captures a conversation of subtext and indirectness quite well).
quite possibly my favourite tv show of all time, though it's hard to compare across genres. definitely my favourite tv comedy, beating out even the excellent "jeeves and wooster" adaptation.
i learnt about this from watching the 'jeeves and wooster' tv series - there was an episode where bertie got the latest hit song as a piece of sheet music and proceeded to the piano to check it out.
Those interested in Wodehouse will also enjoy Stephen Fry’s article on Wodehouse: http://www.pgwodehousebooks.com/fry.htm
Fry played Jeeves in the TV series Jeeves and Wooster and quotes some of my favorite bits of Wodehouse, such as
> Unlike the male codfish, which, suddenly finding itself the parent of three million five hundred thousand little codfish, cheerfully resolves to love them all, the British aristocracy is apt to look with a somewhat jaundiced eye on its younger sons.
This is the new film by Adam Curtis, the maker of The Century of the Self and other great documentaries. Worth a watch. It was just shown on the BBC TV and http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p04b183c/adam-curtis-hypernormalisation here , and ought to be available to those with BBC Worldwide subscriptions.
Note: I hope it's available in other ways, so that others can buy this this public service institution is rewarded more so it can make more such things in the future. (ie, if you torent it, please find a way to contribute back, like buying old DVDs of Fawlty Towers, Jeeves and Wooster, Ab Fab, etc)
I love the Jeeves and Wooster books and TV series. My first Django project was: http://jeevesandwooster.eliseratcliffe.co.uk/. This is a website with information about the Jeeves and Wooster TV series. By the way, I'm very much a beginner programmer so would really appreciate any feedback on the site.
If you have not watched Laurie and Fry's TV Series "Jeeves and Wooster", make it a point to do so. It's really a funny, intelligent series. The use of language is clever and the two have their characters nailed down. My wife and I just finished going through it for the 3rd time.
Wooster is a rich nitwit, Jeeves is his valet. They get into impossible situations usually involving Wooster or one of his inept friends getting into trouble with the law or a woman and have to get bailed out in some equally impractical way.
Um.... does that mean there's a first and second Dirk Gently radio series?
To the internets, Batman!
Although, frankly, while the original HHGTG radio series is perhaps my favorite version of the story, I have my doubts about how Dirk would turn out as a radio play. At best, it might end up being like the Jeeves and Wooster TV series, which was essentially flawless and yet still disappointing, because it got the characters and the plots right but didn't have Wodehouse's prose descriptions, which are where the majority of the value lives.
But it's well worth a try!
No. I realized TV was what I would now call a "time sink" (didn't have a word for it then) when I was about 15, and stopped watching it. I've never owned a TV. I do sometimes watch old TV episodes on DVD though. I especially recommend Fawlty Towers, Jeeves and Wooster, The Dick Van Dyke Show, and The Saint.