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WGBH Boston
Jeeves & Wooster - The Complete Fourth Season

Jeeves & Wooster - The Complete Fourth Season

List Price: $39.95
Your Price: $35.96
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 2 stars
Summary: One season too far
Review: Fry and Laurie are probably one of the greatest modern comedy teams. The first three seasons captured the Wodehouse spirit wonderfully. This season, the writers/director thought they were funnier than P. G. and decided to re-write his stories. The result is embarrassing and painful to watch.

If you are dying for your J & W fix, re-watch one of the earlier seasons and save yourself the pain.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Oops - should have stopped after the 3rd season
Review: I agree with the other reviewers. I love Jeeves & Wooster. I love Fry & Laurie. But the 4th season isn't up to snuff. The writing is weak. It makes me think they ran out of Woodehouse's original stories and arrogantly thought they could pull together their own. A lot of the original cast members are gone, and their replacements just don't cut it. For example, the imposing Roderick Glossip is now a nice fuzzy guy who needs help. At least it's the same Honoria. In a lot of places I felt like I was watching a Fry & Laurie skit, rather than Jeeves & Wooster. Not that a Fry & Laurie skit is a bad thing, but it just didn't fit with Woodehouse.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Oops - should have stopped after the 3rd season
Review: I agree with the other reviewers. I love Jeeves & Wooster. I love Fry & Laurie. But the 4th season isn't up to snuff. The writing is weak. It makes me think they ran out of Woodehouse's original stories and arrogantly thought they could pull together their own. A lot of the original cast members are gone, and their replacements just don't cut it. For example, the imposing Roderick Glossip is now a nice fuzzy guy who needs help. At least it's the same Honoria. In a lot of places I felt like I was watching a Fry & Laurie skit, rather than Jeeves & Wooster. Not that a Fry & Laurie skit is a bad thing, but it just didn't fit with Woodehouse.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Very enjoyable series, although this one is not as strong.
Review: I've greatly enjoyed Wodehouse's stories involving the Wooster and Jeeves pair. This TV series overall has been quite good, although the first two seasons are most definitely the best. This one, the fourth suffers from far too many cast changes (the characters feel like they've changed too much as well). Some quite corny script pieces, and some strange mangling of different short stories to make up an episode.

Overall, I do still enjoy the series.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Just keeps getting better.
Review: Jeeves and Wooster gets better with every season. This one is the best and funniest of the lot. It makes one wish Wodehouse had been even more prolific. Stephen Frye and Hugh Laurie are impeccable, and the supporting casts are some of the finest British character actors ever assembled. Besides being some of the funniest and wittiest shows ever, the direction, interior sets, scenery, etc., are stunning. Probably as close to time travel as we will ever get.
The one weakness of the series is that the female roles seem to keep changing actresses somewhat interchangeably. They all do terrific jobs, but it is odd for Miss Basset to change roles every other season, and good luck keeping track of Bertie's aunts.
This is one of the real highpoints of British TV. I hope there are more.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Perfect or not, it's hilarious
Review: Okay, I agree. I don't remember reading about Bertie and Jeeves in a lifeboat rowing across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, but at that point in the episode ("Bridegroom Wanted"), who cares? It's worth it just for the Jeeves's line: "If you will remember sir, that narrow passage of water that you insisted was the Serpentine turned out to be the Panama Canal." So like them.

And, of course, the classic moment in which Bertie is trying to explain a supposedly hypothetical example involving characters A and B and "some other fellow, what shall we call him?" Jeeves: "C, sir?" Bertie: "Well, all right, I suppose Caesar is as good a name as any."

Unlike the previous episodes, this series seems to have much more slapstick humor, all pushed politely to the background. It's an attempt (and, I think, a successful one) to convey the physical stuff that Wodehouse alludes to, such as Stinker Pinker being reminded "Try not to fall over the furniture." It could be just me, but I thought it worked well.

There's a slight disappointment in losing some of the actors who had played characters in the earlier series, but the new ones certainly do just as well. All in all, deliciously Wodehousian. Highly recommended.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Don't fix what isn't broken
Review: The first three seasons were great. Clive Exton did a superb job of adapting the original Wodehouse stories for television, weaving separate tales together so seamlessly that if you hadn't read them first, you'd have a hard time telling what had been changed. Inexplicably, the fourth season is a complete departure from what came before. The first three episodes are, for some reason, set in America, but are very loosely based on stories set in England. I watched them all, hoping they would get better, but it was not to be. There was a great deal of scene padding (multiple scenes of Bertie frolicking at the Hotsy Totsy Club, for instance), as well as the genuinely uninspired comic creations of Mr. Exton. I will grant that, due to the sheer number of Wodehouse's writings, I may well have missed a few Jeeves tales along the way, but if turns out that Wodehouse actually put Bertie and Jeeves in a lifeboat and sent them on an eight month long voyage around the globe, well, I'm dashed.

After watching the first DVD, I hesitated with the second. Eventually I did break down, however, and I'm glad I did. The last three episodes find young Bertram back in his native land, and the result is enjoyable. Again, the stories were based on old favorites intermixed with ones I did not recognise. Again, it could simply be that I have missed a few over the years. Whatever the case, I did enjoy the last three shows. So to sum up, if you buy this one, set your drink on the first disc and pop the second in your player, put your feet up, and enjoy.

If you want more Wodehouse for your money, however, order "Wodehouse Playhouse" Season One. It's from 1975, is made up mostly of Mr. Mulliner stories, and for ...(at present) it's a much better value.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Don't fix what isn't broken
Review: The first three seasons were great. Clive Exton did a superb job of adapting the original Wodehouse stories for television, weaving separate tales together so seamlessly that if you hadn't read them first, you'd have a hard time telling what had been changed. Inexplicably, the fourth season is a complete departure from what came before. The first three episodes are, for some reason, set in America, but are very loosely based on stories set in England. I watched them all, hoping they would get better, but it was not to be. There was a great deal of scene padding (multiple scenes of Bertie frolicking at the Hotsy Totsy Club, for instance), as well as the genuinely uninspired comic creations of Mr. Exton. I will grant that, due to the sheer number of Wodehouse's writings, I may well have missed a few Jeeves tales along the way, but if turns out that Wodehouse actually put Bertie and Jeeves in a lifeboat and sent them on an eight month long voyage around the globe, well, I'm dashed.

After watching the first DVD, I hesitated with the second. Eventually I did break down, however, and I'm glad I did. The last three episodes find young Bertram back in his native land, and the result is enjoyable. Again, the stories were based on old favorites intermixed with ones I did not recognise. Again, it could simply be that I have missed a few over the years. Whatever the case, I did enjoy the last three shows. So to sum up, if you buy this one, set your drink on the first disc and pop the second in your player, put your feet up, and enjoy.

If you want more Wodehouse for your money, however, order "Wodehouse Playhouse" Season One. It's from 1975, is made up mostly of Mr. Mulliner stories, and for ...(at present) it's a much better value.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: J & W Fourth Season
Review: The last disk in Volumn two titled: "the ties that bind" , I feel was the best of the whole 4th season! That awful
Mr. Brinkly was in it and he stole the private and cherished "book" from Jeeves's Ganymedes club. And of course Bertie got himself engaged again... to two women at the same time! Bertie and Jeeves's antics on this particular disk are quite funny. It shows how far they've come as friends as well as loyal employer/employee. Other than that disk, I can't recall the other ones in that 4th series off hand.
Beth

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Perfect Series, Typical A&E: a lacking DVD
Review: Typical A&E tripe; a great-almost-beyond-words British series with virtual no redeeming qualities to the DVD. Interviews? Pah! Behind the scenes? Oik! Features of any kind? Nah, no one wants them, right A&E?

Would it really kill you guys to provide closed captioning for those of us with hearing difficulties?


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