First broadcast: 1990
Starring: Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie
Creator: Adapted from the PG Wodehouse novels.
The lowdown: Witless socialite Bertie Wooster can’t stop getting into scrapes. Whether it be trying to extricate himself or a friend from an engagement or the fallout from an unwise wager, his life is filled with dangers. Bertie Wooster is rich, single, kind-hearted and fun-loving. Thanks to Jeeves his life is free from mundane tasks, if not trouble-free.
There is only one man who can prevent him being blackballed from polite society, his valet Jeeves. Jeeves sees trouble before it happens and is nearly always ready with advice, a masterplan or a ladder to escape from an upstairs window.
The comedy dramas are set in the 1920s and 1930s when many a wealthy men had a manservant who organised his clothes, food, diary and supported his leisure hours. Jeeves is a manservant, not a butler, because he does not recognise other domestic staff.
Memorable moments: There are many, but one of the best episodes comes in series three. Bertie sails to New York to escape Honoria Glossop. Onboard he is is given the job of looking after Lord Wilmot Malvern. Malvern is a sap and mummy’s boy of the worst kind. Even worse, he is teetotal. But once free from the shackles of his mother, Wilmot develops a taste for champagne and the ladies. Bertie is dragged into a crisis.
The characters: The dramas are filled with eccentrics. Gussie Fink-Nottle is obsessed by newts. Archibald Mulliner adores socks. Mr Anstruther is the "wettest man in Worcestershire". Not forgetting Sir Watkyn Bassett, the owner of Totleigh Towers and father of Madeline. Tuppy Glossop is a fun-loving fool. Madelaine Bassett is a hopeless romantic and Jeeves is determined to stop her becoming engaged to his master. Among other things Madelaine believes that every time a fairy blows its nose a child is born.
Trivia: When World War II broke out in 1939, PG Wodehouse remained in France at his seaside home of Le Touquet. He was interned by the Germans and sent to Upper Silesia.
Memorable lines: “Tuppy, don’t tell me you’ve broken the habit of a lifetime and got a job.”
Bertie’s catchphrases: “What ho, Jeeves. I say. What a wheeze.”
Jeeves’s catchphrases: "Precisely sir." “The moment a master carries his wife through the front door, it is time for his gentleman’s gentleman to disappear through the back door.”
Fry on Jeeves and Wooster: "It was Sunday evening television at its best in the sense that it was like dropping yourself into a great mousse-ie [sic]souffle with the cars, the ashtrays, the cocktail shakers, the hairstyles, the silliness, the language, the characterisation, the locations. Everything about it was charming and British."
