Blandings

The casting may be more eccentric than the storylines but there's a jolliness to these adaptations by Guy Andrews, from the stories of PG Wodehouse. Tonight's concluding tale sees the household at Blandings Castle take drastic action when befuddled Lord Emsworth (Timothy Spall) falls under the spell of a gold-digging marchioness (Jessica Hynes). Meanwhile, dipsomaniac heir Freddie (Jack Farthing) has sworn off women altogether - until he meets the Amazonian beauty drafted in to de-gas the Empress.

It's the Blandings fête, the Emsworth family's most important day of the year, according to battleaxe Constance (Jennifer Saunders).

Of course the event will be ruined because idiot Freddie is giving an unsuitable speech in the big tent and there are a pair of grubby urchins roaming the grounds of Blandings, intent on mischief. They are a couple of "London Fresh Air Children" who, Constance tells her brother Lord Emsworth, "are here to see civilised people comporting themselves properly". But Emsworth, for once, refuses to be cowed either by his sister or his incomprehensible, gravel-obsessed gardener.

Singer Paloma Faith guest-stars as Georgia, a grating cockney showgirl brought to Blandings by cockscomb-haired idiot Freddie. Georgia takes an instant shine to clenched butler Beach, who's terrified.

Guy Andrews's adaptations of PG Wodehouse's stories have come in for flak from some viewers for being empty piffle, shorn of Wodehouse's wit. They have a point, and it's hard to see who the stories are aimed at. Still, Blandings fills a need for a bit of nonsense on a Sunday afternoon, where it's won audiences of more than five million. So there are many people who will doubtless enjoy David Walliams's return as fussy secretary Baxter.

Beefy Popjoy, Herr Schnellhund, Paquita Manganara: the characters in Guy Andrews's adaptations of PG Wodehouse's stories have such gloriously ludicrous names you can't help but smile. This week a German dance teacher (David Bamber) is drafted in to help Lord Emsworth with his footwork while the sublimely foolish Freddie has managed to marry a girl who speaks no English. He met her in a club "dancing around in a girdle of soft fruit" so he's trying to keep this from his formidable Aunt Connie in case "she soars over my cranium and feasts on my brains". "A meagre luncheon that will be" is Emsworth's cutting response.

Mistaken identity. Funny foreigners. Sham marriages. Poorly domesticated animals. Class consciousness. Lashings of slapstick. To watch Blandings is to realise that PG Wodehouse's knockabout tales, for better or worse, enshrined many of the rules for the British TV sitcom. And Guy Andrews's light comedy proves a perfectly charming diversion, bowled along by fine performances (Timothy Spall is superb as the perpetually bamboozled Clarence) and the potential for farce offered by the amorous entanglements of callow young Freddie and Gertrude, this week romancing a Portuguese dancer and oafish Reverend 'Beefy' Bingham respectively. Sometimes one does yearn for a character with an IQ over ten (Mark Williams's wry butler is a little too enigmatic to count), and it's undeniably slight, but it's carried off with real charm and craft.

Blandings review

How, you wonder, as you watch yet another masterclass in Great British Overacting, was this ever allowed to happen? It's not Guy Andrews' fault that books whose genius lies in their tone lose 90 per cent of that genius when you reduce them only to dialogue.

Nothing makes me want to break fingers more than a dud

The curious thing when TV people muck something up is not that they do it at all, for we have come to expect this of them, but that they do it so spectacularly.

Blandings is a new comedy series adapted from a collection of novels by P.G. Wodehouse, but it's already attracted a wide range of criticism. Much of the vitriol targets the show's family-friendly, 6.30pm slot on a Sunday evening, but there's also criticism from die-hard Wodehouse fans who believe that any adaptation of his work is sacrilege. Hey ho.

The series follows the residents of Blandings Castle; Clarence (Timothy Spall), who just wants a quiet life - and to spend time with his beloved pig, the Empress; his sister Connie (Jennifer Saunders), who constantly interfering with other people's business; and Clarence's loyal butler Beach (Mark Williams) - all of whom are pestered by visits from Clarence's idiotic son Freddie (Jack Farthing). In the opening episode, Clarence tries to enter the Empress into a fattest-pig contest, but his pig man is put in jail by his main rival.

The first thing that came to me when watching Blandings is that Spall can play a toff better than I thought. His performance as Clarence was great, as is his delivery of Wodehouse's lines, like when he demonstrates how persuasive his late wife was: "She once put forth such a forceful case for beetroot I actually put some in my mouth."

I was a bit annoyed by the gimmicky use of comic sound effects, whether it be with Freddie's terrible driving or Connie's stormy demands. You can try to ignore it, but it gets a bit tedious after a while.

On the whole though, Blandings is an entertaining half-hour and a decent way to pass the time - although I still expect a few comments from fans trying to push his books into my hands.

A pig eating cake was the most amusing thing about BBC1's Sunday teatime comedy Blandings, which can't have been the intention of PG Wodehouse, whose tales of upper-class twittery inspired this waste of half an hour. Timothy Spall gave good drawl as eccentric Lord Emsworth and Mark Williams was as solid as you'd expect as the long-suffering butler; but civilisation has come too far to put trouserless yokels cavorting on a table in the hope of laughter.

David Walliams guest-stars as Baxter, a pernickety secretary brought in by the formidable Aunt Constance to clear up the mess of her halfwitted brother Lord Emsworth (Timothy Spall).

He starts by re-classifying his boss's marbles collection. "I promise you, I will regularise your brother," he announces before attacking the hapless Emsworth's paperwork with terrifying zeal. It's another sweetly funny episode in Guy Andrews's adaptations of the PG Wodehouse stories. Just think of it as The Idiot Downton Abbey, where absurd toffs get into muddles, usually with pigs and women.

Emsworth's impecunious rooster-haired buffoon of a son, Freddie (smashing Jack Farthing), has once again lost his allowance, this time in a doomed wager with fellow Drones Club member Catsmeat Potter Pirbright. After eating dog biscuits to impress a girl, Freddie decides to make his fortune selling canine nibbles. Biffing!