Jeeves and the Wedding Bells - Sebastian Faulks' homage to Wodehouse

I'm rather sceptical of literary 'homage' as a genre. The idea of entrusting well-known (and in this case extremely well-loved) characters to the sometimes less than safe keeping of an established contemporary author can produce the very stuff of nightmares for devotees of the original. True, there have been some notable successes - Anthony Horowitz's House of Silk being a delightful case in point. In Wedding Bells, Faulks has assembled the usual suspects and teamed them with a cast of Wodehousesque supporting characters - Sir and Lady Hackwood are a good case in point - and given use a Wooster outing that packs a fair few laughs. However, there are a couple of jarring notes: Wodehouse's Wooster and friends inhabited a parallel universe, where the realities of life in the 20s and 30s were mercifully absent. This was an England devoid of the loss and horror of World War One. But Faulks allows the brutal world to intrude - a key character has lost both parents in the Lusitania sinking, Jeeves refers to a distant relative dying on the Somme. I enjoyed the tale, but my Wooster is a balm to the senses and a lovable upper-class fop who can mix with the rude mechanicals at the bar in the village hall as well as with his elders but no-betters at the Hall, albeit with the need for a 'sharpener' before the ordeal starts. A good diverting read, but I could have done without the all-too-real world intrusions.

Blandings - too bland for Wodehouse

Blandings - a good job the Beeb said the series is 'based on' P G Wodehouse's stories. The originals are much better and far, far funnier. As a Sunday evening sub-Downton offering Timothy Spall and Jennifer Saunders have been mildly amusing, but after I got a couple of 'Plumb' Wodehouse's books from the library (we still have them in Calderdale - and damn good they are too), I realised the written version is much better than the screen performance. For a start, Wodehouse carefully crafts his humour and lets the reader in - slowly - to the unfolding action. What is a short piece of virtual slapstick to Spall's Lord Emsworth is a verbal delight on the page - and laugh out loud funny when he reaches the squishy punchline. The hero - in Blandings it would be Lord Emsworth - is just a liable as the villain to end up looking ridiculous, and even the most inconsequential of plotlines is made to feel like the stuff of major importance as Wodehouse's elegant prose leads you into the action. Turn off the TV - read the books. Aside from the Jeeves and Wooster series, I particularly recommend Blandings Castle and A Few Quick Ones (ten short and very funny stories).