Friday, September 11, 2009

Serendipitous Valentine

Two years ago George planned a wonderful evening of dinner and a play for Valentine's day. The play was based on P.G. Wodehouse's "Right Ho, Jeeves", and was my first introduction to Jeeves and Wooster. I was enthralled from the start with the wit, pacing, and surprising plot twists being spun in different directions by silly Bertie and his wise butler, Jeeves, amidst undauntable amicability between the two. I went promptly to the library and acquired the Jeeves Omnibus and had fun reading the first couple of stories aloud to the kids.

A few months ago I saw that Netflix offered the early 90's British TV series, Jeeves and Wooster, with Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie, and put the first season, two episodes per disc, on our queue, spread out between other movies. The first disc with two episodes met mixed reviews in our family. George was out of town so he didn't see it, and mine and Ben's enthusiasm was mostly carried in on the coattails of our previous experiences with the play and the books. The other kids were luke-warm to bored. I'll admit Hugh Laurie is a more annoying Bertie than the actor in the play was. And the first episodes were a bit slow. All this to say, it has taken us a while to view disc 2.

So last night, after George's and my post-Valentine plan to see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button fell through as it is on its way out of our local theaters, with only an hour before bedtime, we decided to go ahead and put in Episode 4 (see link above, I don't know what happened to #3), which would be an hour long. Much to our surprise, as it was not titled the same (again see link above), it was the first half of the play that we saw two years and one day before! The five kids who are not living in a dorm like Jared is, enjoyed this episode much more than the episodes on the first disc. Ben's laughter was exceptionally mirthful throughout. Of course we had to go ahead and watch the fifth episode to complete the tale.

No comments:

Post a Comment