First episode - OK-ish. The plot of the story was a little mangled, but something of the original Wodehouse humour survived.
Second episode - utterly dreadful. All pretence to be an adaptation of Wodehouse was abandoned, with only the names of the characters remaining. Instead we had a completely new, thoroughly half-baked plot, written by a script writer who never grew out of scatological humour (something Wodehouse never, ever stooped to). A terrible waste - the cast could have delivered a good result given a decent screenplay, but really struggled with this drivel.
Wodehouse is widely recognised as being the master of the complex comic plot. It's incredibly arrogant of screenwriters to say, "Ah yes, but obviously I can do a lot better."
Additional note - dipped back into the series for episode 4 - "The Crime Wave at Blandings". The original short story is arguably one of the best, if not actually the best comic short story ever written in the English language. Anyone who hasn't read it should immediately go and read several Blandings stories first (in order to get familiar with the characters) and then read TCWaB. The dramatisation of it in this series was beneath contempt. Absolutely everything which makes the story good was lost and replaced by dross instead.
Incidentally, TCWaB is the only time when Emsworth is recorded as actually visiting Beach's pantry. Gally was regularly to be found supping port with Beach, but not Emsworth. This series has him popping in and out every two minutes.
Second episode - utterly dreadful. All pretence to be an adaptation of Wodehouse was abandoned, with only the names of the characters remaining. Instead we had a completely new, thoroughly half-baked plot, written by a script writer who never grew out of scatological humour (something Wodehouse never, ever stooped to). A terrible waste - the cast could have delivered a good result given a decent screenplay, but really struggled with this drivel.
Wodehouse is widely recognised as being the master of the complex comic plot. It's incredibly arrogant of screenwriters to say, "Ah yes, but obviously I can do a lot better."
Additional note - dipped back into the series for episode 4 - "The Crime Wave at Blandings". The original short story is arguably one of the best, if not actually the best comic short story ever written in the English language. Anyone who hasn't read it should immediately go and read several Blandings stories first (in order to get familiar with the characters) and then read TCWaB. The dramatisation of it in this series was beneath contempt. Absolutely everything which makes the story good was lost and replaced by dross instead.
Incidentally, TCWaB is the only time when Emsworth is recorded as actually visiting Beach's pantry. Gally was regularly to be found supping port with Beach, but not Emsworth. This series has him popping in and out every two minutes.