PG Wodehouse

This adaptation of the PG Wodehouse stories has inevitably been dubbed a comic riposte to Downton Abbey and I'm all for that. Timothy Spall is bumbling ninth earl Clarence, much more interested in winning fattest pig prize at the country show than any of the human dramas, forgetting his son's name and being reluctant to intervene in highly unsuitable courtships.

Tom Sharpe on PG Wodehouse

On the eve of a new six-part adaptation of the Blandings stories by BBC One, author Tom Sharpe tells of his love for the stories of PG Wodehouse.

PG Wodehouse feels like one of the less frequently adapted British literary totems. On one hand, it's surprising, given that his light, deft comedy seems perfect for TV formats. But set against that is Wodehouse's remarkable facility for language - it takes an intrepid writer to attempt to do him justice, and quite a cast too. This, the first TV Wodehouse since Fry & Laurie's 1990s adventures, is underpinned by Timothy Spall's gleeful portrayal of the amiable but befuddled Lord Emsworth, and promises tales of various misadventures involving underfattened pigs, unsuitable suitors and ineffectual fops. It's minor fare but the jauntily affectionate silliness might just get you in the end. Anyone disenchanted by the will-this-do? cynicism of the Downton Christmas special could do worse than give this a go.

Like all PG Wodehouse adaptations, this suffers from the inevitable fact that it can never be as funny as the original, where the humour is not particularly in the ludicrous situations - here devoted pig owner Lord Emsworth strives to help the Empress win the Fattest Pig Contest despite the untimely imprisonment of her keeper. It's the way they're told: sheer effervescent clever wordplay, bubbling along at the perfect pace, with eccentric metaphors and slang words which jump off the page to charm away any reservations (that unfortunate Nazi collaboration business, or the fact they all basically tell the same story over 
and over).

Scriptwriters do try, forcing the best lines in there somehow, but even actors with the skill of Timothy Spall and Robert Bathurst can't make them sound as funny as they read. Spall looks exactly right as the lugubrious, befuddled Emsworth though, with Jennifer Saunders as his bossy sister (straying slightly too far into spoofing it up) and newcomer Jack Farthing as his cheerfully idiotic son. Frothy nonsense is hard to bring off and though I rarely laughed, it is an amiable and harmless distraction from a cold, broke January.

Blandings = Downton with less grandeur and more farce

As we reported back in February of last year, a bit of PG Wodehouse brilliance is coming your way as Blandings premieres tomorrow on BBC One at 1830. For those that feel Downton Abbey has a bit too much grandeur for its own good and needs a bit of farce (or more than it already has in some people's minds, anyway) then Blandings is well worth your telly time this Sunday.

The balm of Blandings

PG Wodehouse's gentle unravelling of upper-class twerpery offers us refuge from our own rage. But was he a class warrior?

Will PG Wodehouse's Blandings work on TV?

Not since Ralph Richardson in 1967 have Lord Emsworth and his beloved pig graced our screens. But can the BBC faithfully capture PG Wodehouse's comic prose in new series Blandings.

With their grand houses and period settings, it's a wonder PG Wodehouse's work hasn't been plundered by television more often. Clive Exton's exuberant Nineties adaptations of Jeeves and Wooster, starring Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie, were highly successful, but there has been nothing since. However, judging by the iffy first episode of this new six-part series, based on the Blandings Castle stories and reworked by Guy Andrews, it seems that Wodehouse's precise comic world is pretty hard to pull off.

The problem lies not with the cast, which is certainly top-notch. Timothy Spall plays bumbling Lord Clarence Emsworth, more interested in pigs than people. Jennifer Saunders delights as his battleaxe sister Connie. And there's good work from Jack Farthing as Clarence's hapless son Freddie, and Mark Williams as Beach, the butler. But the episode can't quite sustain the necessary brio and the bonhomie eventually wears thin. Tonight's tale involves Clarence's rivalry with neighbour Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe (Robert Bathurst) over a Fattest Pig competition and Connie's attempt to prevent niece Angela (Alice Orr-Ewing) from an unsuitable marriage.

Blandings (BBC1, Sunday), a jolly new series based on the Blandings Castle stories of PG Wodehouse, features with a starry cast. Pick of the performances is Jack Fathing's, as Freddie, Lord Emsworth's - Clarence's - ass of a son. A charming ass, mind. I don't quite believe Timothy Spall as Clarence, but this is probably more to do with association than performance. Bumbling, befuddled, sure. But I'm not convinced Spall should be a toff, should he? He does look right, actually. He also looks a bit like Empress, the pig. Well, they say owners look like their dogs, don't they, so why not pigs as well?

Pig-hoo-o-o-o-ey! is the title of this one. It's the master call - like a master key - to unlock a pig's, any pig's, appetite if it goes on hunger strike. Which Empress does. Not helpful when she's up for Fat Pig of the Year. It's silly - of course it is, it's Wodehouse. It's also rather charming. What?

Nostalgia TV at its best

The forthcoming GK Chesterton adaptation of Father Brown and PG Wodehouse adaptation of Blandings, both starring Mark Williams, represent a welcome attempt to bring back a gentler form of drama that has fallen out of fashion.