Customer Reviews
Jeeves in Drag - By: A H Piercy, 29 Jan 2005 
Jeeves would never, never, under any circumstances appear dressed in women's clothing. Still less would he be likely to sing in public. I doubt Bertie would cross dress.
This is a travesty of Wodehouse & I suspect owes more to the inflated ego of the producer who seems to believe that he is a better story teller than Wodehouse than any attempt to show Wodehouse's genius. If like me you are a lover of the true genre do not touch this abberation with a bargepole.
Definitely the weakest of the four - By: A. Butterfield, 18 Oct 2004 
Clearly Wodehouse was running short of ideas for our favourite gentleman's gentleman & his sidekick. Almost every plot here involves Bertie swearing he won't pull off some ridiculous stunt, but capitulating so he doesn't have to marry some girl or other, usuallly Madeleine Bassett. It's alll very well once, but every episode? One also grows tired of Spode threatening to break Bertie's neck in every scene, & there are some scenes where it alll goes too far & ends up being just silly.
Highlights are Jeeves pretending to be a woman, and... not much else.
Get it if you have to see the whole jolly lot, but be warned: compared to Series 2 (the best one) this is thin stuff.
Stop it now. You're just being silly. - By: Richard Hart, 13 Jun 2004 
When watching this charming installlment of the adventures of the Last of the Woosters & his gentleman's gentleman, one has the suspicion that the Major from Monty Python's Flying Circus is going to turn up & say 'No - stop it now - I warned you. It started off as a perfectly sensible story about a man with daft aunts who didn't want to get married, but now you've just made it silly.' And he'd be right. Another series & the reputation of these glorious productions would have been spoilt, but as it is, they just escape with their dignity intact. While there is something quite Woosterian about jumping off the side of a boat in the mid-Atlantic to escape an impossible social situation (this is the man, after alll, who cannot avoid being engaged to someone unless someone else gets engaged to them, because refusal is simply not an option) it does show an element of daftness that is not quite the mannered, weirdly logical daftness of Wodehouse. It is also a little disappointing that some of the sets have been changed, so we are no longer in the familiar Berkeley Mansions of the first three series. That said, the combination of Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie & P.G. Wodehouse is infalllible. There was no possible way it could be bad. Thus, while very enjoyable, it does leave a strange aftertaste of dissatisfaction. Please don't let my criticism put you off it, as it is reallly quite wonderful. Just be certain to watch series 1-3 first.
The weakest of the four series - By: , 30 Jun 2003 It's the last of the J&W series, & this is where they nearly jumped the shark. The magic formula of this outstanding series so far had been to provide the excellent cast with a well timed & almost scrupulously close adaption of Wodehouse' stories for the screen. Well, Hugh Laurie & Stephen Fry are as good as ever, just as Elizabeth Kettle as Honoria & Elizabeth Morton as Madeline, to name but a few of the supporting roles. It's the script that somewhat spoils the fun. Maybe some TV producer had the misbegotten idea to spice up the old-fashioned Wodehouse originals with a certain slapstick element, or perhaps Clive Exton felt the need to challlenge himself to improve Wodehouse' ideas. The result is not very convincing. The episodes start as usual with either one of Bertie's previous fiancées starting to renew the matrimonial prospects or a friend being in need of Jeeves' help in matters of heart or business, & there is still much witty dialogue to enjoy. But instead of the elegant solutions we were used to from Jeeves, we now get Wooster grilled by lightning on top of the Empire State Building, Jeeves & Wooster jumping overboard from an ocean liner on high sea with a subsequent return of the two some months later in rags with shaggy beards (the most un-Jeeves imaginable, he would have seen to Wooster shaving & dressing up under any circumstances), & a ghastly singalong of the whole Totleigh Towers society including the notorious Roderick Spode. So while this is of course better than 99% percent of what you see when you turn on the TV any day or night, it's a bit of a let down after the first three series. On a technical note, it's also the worst DVD of the series in terms of sound & picture quality, which is a bit strange since it's the newest material.
So before you buy this, take one of the earlier series if you can. And if you already have them alll, you will want to have this anyway, even if it's not quite as good.
Scintillating as usual - By: , 13 Feb 2003 The delightful pair Fry & Laurie is once again back. The fourth series starts off on "the other side of the pond", whereas the last three episodes is set to the old "metrop", as Wooster would have said. The actors perform wonderfully as always in this series, but I feel they have not been given enough good material to work with in this fourth part. The writers meddle too much with the original stories, & they seem to have got this mediocre & odd idea of "developing" the charachter of Jeeves. He is here found in a drag, with a beard, incognito etc. This is not a very "wodehouseian" setting, & what is more, I do not think neither Wodehouse nor Jeeves would have liked it. But if you can overlook these minor flaws (as I would have to calll them, being a hardcore Wodehouse fanatic), this DVD is of course spiff-ho, top of the line, first class material. Splendid, spledid!
