“BLANDINGS” BBC1     10th February 2013

“Lord Emsworth and the Girl Friend”

Let the credits roll. Guy Andrews (writer), Spencer Campbell (producer), Paul Seed (director), Michelle Buck and Damien Trimmer (executive producers), and Christian Smith (BBC executive producer). You’ve done it again. An almost complete cock-up of another of Wodehouse’s finest stories. The BBC has hit the nail on the head when it describes Guy Andrews as “the writer”, because much of what appears on the screen wasn’t written by Mr Wodehouse.

For a start, what’s young Freddie doing in this story? It wasn’t Wodehouse’s idea. The same applies to the pig, and  to the topiary in the shape of a naked lady.

What about McAllister the gardener giving notice and having to be bribed so stay? Wodehouse may well have written something of the sort, but not in this story.

We see the children being invited to stay at the castle by his lordship. Sorry, gang, you made that up. You also made up the collapsing tent, and Freddie’s speech.

Wodehouse called McAllister “grim and dour” and described him as capable of terrifying even an earl. You turned him into a raving lunatic who screamed.  You decided to plaster the children’s faces with jam and cream – was that really necessary? And the muddle you got into with Gladys’s accent meant that quite a lot of excellent dialogue was wasted. Incidentally, scissors? For picking flowers? Would an earl use scissors? The word does not appear in the story, as written, and I rather think Wodehouse, if he has heard about it, will be having an Elysian fit.

“…we’ll go down to the village and have a chat with Ern.” Congratulations, team, on getting the last line just about right. Pure Wodehouse, and all the better for that. The rest is BBC drivel.

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