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?

Video: BBC News preview of Blandings

Timothy Spall and Jennifer Saunders star in a new television series set in 1929 and based on the Blandings Castle comedy stories by PG Wodehouse. Saunders jokes that the comedy series is "more realistic" than the hit ITV drama Downton Abbey.

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.

Crom Castle, Fermanagh, is setting for BBC comedy

A new BBC comedy filmed in County Fermanagh will hit television screens for the first time on Sunday.

Meet the cast of BBC1's comedy drama Blandings

Timothy Spall, Jennifer Saunders and a pig star in the Sunday night adaptation of PG Wodehouse's stories.

PG Wodehouse and his French connection

Comic author PG Wodehouse was born in England and died in the US, but in between he lived for several years in France, a country that looms large in some of his most colourful creations.

A castle, Empress the pig & a rather porky aristocrat

Timothy Spall goes posh in a new PG Wodehouse adaptation.

IoS PG Wodehouse quiz: You could just ask Jeeves!

Downton Abbey may have gone, but fear not! PG Wodehouse is back. As the BBC's Blandings hits our screens next Sunday, Matthew Bell tests your knowledge of this saga of toffs at play.

Timothy Spall interview

Ahead of his new BBC comedy, Timothy Spall tells Daphne Lockyer how a tempestuous voyage around Britain mirrored his victory over leukaemia.