Stephen
Fry and Hugh Laurie got up to such wonderful work throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s
that it’s hard to pinpoint the funniest stuff or the best moments, but their
comedic chemistry in this Masterpiece adaption of P.G. Wodehouse’s stories is
definitely up there. Between the playful
writing and the pitch-perfect performances, these two characters made the
series something special.
Jeeves
enters Bertie’s life when the blithely irresponsible rich man about town –
plagued by meddlesome aunts and allergic to work – is brought before a judge
over a drunken prank. A “gentleman’s
gentleman,” Jeeves is sent by an agency to be Bertie’s manservant. His impact is felt the instant he arrives,
thanks to his foolproof hangover cure, and despite Bertie’s insistence that
he’s “not one of those fellows who become absolute slaves to their valets,” Jeeves
is soon subtly running the show.
This is
most evident, of course, in Jeeves’s many stratagems. Between inheritance troubles, love woes, and
social snafus, Bertie and his friends, all of whom have more gumption than
sense, regularly get themselves into all manner of scrapes. Pre-Jeeves, it seems Bertie has always been
the one his chums turn to for solutions to their problems, and he prides
himself on his overcomplicated, almost invariably-disastrous schemes. So, it becomes a point of contention when
Jeeves begins helpfully pointing out the flaws in Bertie’s plans – even worse
when his friends start choosing Jeeves’s ideas over his own. Bertie is both stubborn and self-assured
enough that he always goes through with his endeavor first, despite Jeeves’s
misgivings, but by mid-episode, he’s usually in dire need of Jeeves to save him
from himself.
I like
that Jeeves throws himself so devotedly and seriously into Bertie’s outlandish
quandaries. Unlike the silly, frivolous Bertie,
Jeeves is a stiff, buttoned-up man who’s always interested in doing things properly,
and his crisp, plummy diction sounds even more precise alongside Bertie’s easy,
offhand slang. Odd-couple comparisons
are probably inevitable, but Jeeves doesn’t live eternally exasperated by the
ridiculousness in which Bertie constantly finds himself. Rather, he truly enjoys playing the
strategist, no matter how inane the problem; sometimes, he even stirs the pot
intentionally, bringing things to the brink of crisis before swooping in to
save the day.
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