Product Details

• Actors: Hugh Laurie, Stephen Fry
• Format: Box set, Color, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo)
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 8
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: A&E Home Video
• DVD Release Date: May 26, 2009
• Run Time: 1150 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (270 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B001V7UXG2
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,541 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• Learn more about "Jeeves & Wooster: The Complete Series" on IMDb

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Fans of Hugh Laurie's prickly, sardonic House character may not realize that Laurie started as a slapstick comedian of the most British type: Veddy, veddy silly. And nowhere has Laurie been sillier, or more divine, than as Bertie Wooster in Jeeves & Wooster, the British TV series based on the famed P.G. Wodehouse characters. Playing off Laurie is the equally splendid Stephen Fry (a longtime Laurie pal and co-star) as the arch and supremely competent valet Jeeves. The two create a winning, hilarious pair of tour guides into the rarified world of early-20th-century upper-crust England. Bertie is kind-hearted and a soft touch, and, well, not exactly street smart. When Bertie's Aunt Agatha ("the nephew-crusher") decides he must be groomed to be a proper prospective husband for a proper well-off young lady, Bertie snaps, "I don't want to be molded, I'm not a jelly!" Auntie: "That's a matter of opinion. Dear." Happily, Jeeves is there to anticipate the worst of Bertie's mishaps (usually involving alcohol) and to find creative ways to bail him out. Fry is deadpan and delightful playing Jeeves, and Laurie is a revelation to any comedy fan who's only experienced him as House. The Wodehouse dialogue is preserved in all its exquisite tossed-away glory. Bertie's short chat with a barkeep doing renovations contains this small gem, from the musing pubman: "Well, they can't abide mooses, the committee can't." It's all about softening that stiff upper lip--and in this, Jeeves & Wooster succeeds brilliantly.--A.T. Hurley

Product Description

Starring superstar and Golden Glober-winning actor Hugh Laurie (House), this perennial bestseller includes all 23 episodes of the classic series.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

286 of 293 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Very good, sir! January 15, 2003

By E. A Solinas HALL OF FAMETOP 100 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:DVD

P.G. Wodehouse wrote funny stories. Obscenely hilarious comedy stories about dim young aristocrats, overbearing aunts and very clever servants.

And of all his creations, the most memorable is the ill-fated and blue-blooded Bertie Wooster and his megabrained valet Jeeves, immortalized by Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry. "The Complete Jeeves & Wooster" brings together all their madcap, bizarre little adventures in England's upper echelongs, with many a disastrous engagement and stint in prison.

Bertie Wooster (Laurie) is in need of a valet, and after a wild night out, the low-key, brainy manservant Jeeves (Fry) is sent by an agency to deal with Bertie's everyday needs.

But Jeeves doesn't just fold Bertie's hankies and give him hangover tonics -- he keeps Bertie out of all kinds of trouble. Predatory young beauties, ditzy idiot pals of Bertie's, and domineering aunts trying to marry him off, Bertie is always in hot water -- and Jeeves always is on hand, with a plot cooking in his impressive brain, to haul his hapless employer out.

"The Complete Jeeves and Wooster" is quite faithful to Wodehouse's original stories -- some stories are combined and others are separated, but they draw heavily on his kooky, bizarro prose. Lots of overbearing old aunts, exploding safes, Neo-Nazis, a constant merry-go-round of oft-broken engagements, eccentric hobbies (newts!), and young women ranging from horribly hearty to airy-fairy.

The only problem is that the stories set in New York just don't have that delicious British flavour that the rest of the series does, although they're still quite funny (Bertie being chased by a berserk cop dressed in a harem outfit). That, and the cast changes continuously....

But those small flaws don't keep the series from being hilarious, from start to finish. Every plot is a hopeless tangle of infatuations, mixups, blackmail, little books of mockery, and stolen policemen's helmets -- and yet somehow Jeeves manages to untangle it by the end. And Wodehouse's dialogue is handled in a brilliant manner ("Because he is a butterfly, who toys with women's hearts and throws them away like soiled gloves!" "Do butterflies do that?").

Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry are perfectly cast as the endearing bumbler Bertie Woosterand the dryly witty Jeeves. Though Bertie's lack of clothing sense (and a trombone) often annoys Jeeves, the brainy valet clearly does have affection for Bertie, and Bertie appreciates Jeeves' ability to save him from fates worse than death (such as marriage to the horribly hearty Honoria or the wispy, fairy-loving dimbulb Madeleine).

"The Complete Jeeves and Wooster" is a simply brilliant stretch of what-ho-what-ho comedy ("You can't be a successful dictator AND design women's underclothing") and deliciously twisting storylines. Not to be missed. Ever. Read more ›

199 of 203 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Excellent series, below average video transfer November 20, 2006

By Earth that Was

Format:DVD|Amazon Verified Purchase

This series was made and acted with great love for P.G. Wodehouse, his writing and his characters. Wodehouse is perhaps the great comic author of the 20th century English speaking world. And these series does Wodehouse justice to the great credit of the series' actors and writers.

But unfortunately the video to DVD transfer, in terms of picture and colour quality, leaves something to be desired. I have seen single series DVD versions of the Jeeves & Wooster and their video colour quality is superior to the reproduction in this complete set. Hopefully one of these days we will see a complete digital remastering of the series, but this box set is visually disappointing. It's a shame the excellent work of the writers, directors and actors has had below average DVD transfer. The 'standard' transfer quality we are used to these days is generally very good, not so here.

166 of 179 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars A Puzzling New/Old Release May 29, 2009

By County Lineman

Format:DVD

The eight discs that clock in at a hefty 1150 minutes of wry British wit that stars Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry is a puzzling (re)release on a pair of critical areas: there is nothing new from the complete series that was issued in 2002 and the transfer to disc remains "iffy," which plagued its initial appearance in the marketplace.

Laurie portrays Bertram Wilberforce "Bertie" Wooster - the bumbling, dimwitted aristocrat - and Fry is the witty valet, Reginald Jeeves, in the series that is based on Sir P.G. Wodehouse's "Jeeves and Wooster" stories. The 23 episodes appeared on the ITV network from April 1990 to June 1993 and feature bossy aunts, romantic scrapes and a number of friends who just can't stay out of mischief.

Hopefully there are plans for a definitive set and this repackaging of a prior release is a bridge to that end. Though the shows were outstanding, there needs to be a serious production makeover to make for a solid collectible for fans of all ages.

42 of 44 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Definitive rendition of the funniest books ever written July 29, 2006

By Robin Wolfson VINE™ VOICE

Format:DVD|Amazon Verified Purchase

Be warned: this is one of those semi-"literary" reviews in which I'm going to talk about Wodehouse, the Jeeves and Wooster series, and the literary heirs of Wodehouse, for those who think there's no such thing as enough comedy in the world.

P. G. Wodehouse ("Plum" to his friends) was the funniest man who ever set pen to paper. He lived to the ripe old age of ninety-three and wrote over ninety books, many featuring the amiable and well-meaning, if somewhat misguided, Bertie Wooster and his brainy manservant Jeeves. Although his work stretches from the late 1890s to the early 1970s, the rudeness of the outside world almost never intrudes and there are surprisingly few cultural references. Wodehouse's stories exist in a kind of eternal Eden of innocent lads and maids chasing each other around the garden and trying to avoid the various serpents trying to crash the party. His characters are almost exclusively from that most useless branch of society, the English moneyed class, and their problems are all silly ones: which witless man will win which brainless girl, and how Aunt Dahlia can steal a silver cow-creamer for her husband so that he'll give her the necessary funds to buoy up her ladies' journal "Milady's Boudoir."

And yet. . . And it's in the "and yet" that Wodehouse makes his mark as the most brilliant social satirist of all time. Unlike George Bernard Shaw, Wodehouse makes no grand stands, addresses no revolutionary agendas. Simply, quietly, and persistently, he takes aim at pretension, meanness, and cruelty by carrying it to its most absurd extent.

Wodehouse's humor is small, domestic, personal, and eternal.... Of a man engaged to a bossy woman, he writes: "He might take the view that when the little [woman] made him sit up and beg and snap lumps of sugar off his nose, it was a compliment, really, because it showed that she was taking an interest." Of a particularly bad play: "One of the critics said he had perhaps seen it at a disadvantage because when he saw it the curtain was up." And of Jeeves's morning conversation with Bertie: "The English poet Herrick expressed the same sentiment when he suggested that we should gather rosebuds while we may. Your elbow is in the butter, sir." (All quotes here from "Jeeves and The Tie That Binds.")

Now, as for Fry and Laurie's rendition of Jeeves and Wooster: it is perfect. And bear in mind that, appearances to the contrary (because Fry and Laurie make it look so effortless), Jeeves and Wooster may be the two most difficult roles in all literature. Bertie must come across as amiable and well-meaning, if a trifle dim, but not a blithering idiot. David Niven tried, and it was a disaster. Jeeves is only slightly less challenging; while he must come across as brilliant and accommodating, he must do so with dignity, with only a minimum of condescension, and with a real fondness for Bertie, something like a mother hen for a slightly addlepated chick.

Fry and Laurie are prefect, as is, by the way, the excellent dramatization and the rest of the ensemble cast. Be warned, however, once you pick up Wodehouse, you'll be hooked forever. Fortunately, his output was prodigious, so you'll have plenty to read and reread, over and over and over. The books never pall; I've read many of them several times and they are always, as Wodehouse titled one of his books, "Something Fresh."

By way of literary genealogy, Wodehouse's stylistic heirs are Douglas Adams (of "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" fame), Joss Whedon (creator of Buffy, Angel, and the Firefly/Serenity series and film), and Hugh Laurie himself, whose first book "The Gun Seller" continues in the Wodehouse tradition. For example: "I hadn't actually planned on picking his brains, because, to be honest, they weren't properly ripe yet." Or the extraordinary line: ". . . there's an undeniable pleasure in stepping into an open-top sports car driven by a beautiful woman. It feels like you're climbing into a metaphor." And as for Joss Whedon, you can practically tell which Wodehouse books he was reading while writing Buffy. When Giles tells Xander: "I suppose there's a certain Machiavellian ingenuity to your transgression," and Xander replies, "I resent that. . . .Or possibly, thank you," they might have stepped right out of Wodehouse's "Full Moon." For his part, Douglas Adams wrote some of the most purely Wodehousian lines of all time, such as: "How do you feel?" "Like a military academy; bits of me keep passing out."

So if you want smart, talky, deliciously funny stuff, you can't do better than settling down with the Fry and Laurie's Jeeves and Wooster, apart, of course, from picking up any of Wodehouse's ninety-some books. Fry and Laurie, however, are a wonderful place to start. Read more ›