One of my favorite British imports from the 1990's was the four-season "Jeeves and Wooster" series. The show starred the apt teaming of Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry, based on the charming and disarming PG Wodehouse's short stories.
This scene is from the third season of "Jeeves and Wooster", the episode finding the nitwit bachelor Bertie Wooster and his man servant putting a rare one over on the bane of young Mr. Wooster's existence: Aunt Agatha, a formidable human dreadnought who is always trying to slip the noose of matrimony over her nephew's head before he can properly "sow his wild oats". (The operative expression here is "Good Lord!")
The juxtaposition between the privileged upper class buffoon Wooster and the worldly wise retainer Jeeves is a (half intended) indictment of the British class system and evidence of the absence of meritocracy in Merry England. I used to enjoy this series when it was on TV too Doug.....Good Lord!
ReplyDeleteThe show inspired me to read some of the Wodehouse stories and they are good stuff. Old PG was incredibly prolific, but his knighthood was put off until he was quite old, perhaps because of some broadcast he made for the Germans during the war. (He was living in France when it was overrun in 1940.)
ReplyDeleteJeeves is quite the polymath and needs all his considerable acumen to prop up his master's little smidgen of the social pyramid. Bertie is quite a useless ass--he nearly murders himself playing golf!--but what makes young Wooster as a social superior tolerable is that Bertie really tries to be helpful to people rather than the disdainful snob he would most likely be if he were a real person.
One of my favorite snatches of the dialogue from the series has Bertie asking:
"I say, Jeeves, do you know everything?"
Jeeves: (after a pause) "I really cannot say, sir."
LOL..great lines.
ReplyDeletePoor old Bertie would have had a life expectancy of less than a week as an officer 'donkey' leading the 'lions' on the Western Front. I guess that's why there are none of those Wooster types left today actually?
Too true. A whole generation of "gentlemen" and other fellows wiped out. Total waste.
ReplyDeleteHugh Laurie and Rowan Atkinson did a send up of the "Journey's End" sort of "trench warfare drama" in one of the "Black Adder" historical comedies as I recall. I'll bet at least some of those in the "poor bloody infantry" would have had a laugh at it.