PG Wodehouse's Blandings = Downton Abbey with less grandeur and more farce
As we reported back in February of last year, a bit of PG Wodehouse brilliance is coming your way as Blandings premieres tomorrow on BBC One at 1830. For those that feel Downton Abbey has a bit too much grandeur for its own good and needs a bit of farce (or more than it already has in some people’s minds, anyway) then Blandings is well worth your telly time this Sunday.
For those few that may be a bit unfamiliar with Wodehouse’s Blandings series, he wrote the first story in 1915. Fourteen novels and five collections of short stories later, he died in 1978, leaving Sunset At Blandings as his only unfinished work. Set in 1929, Blandings was filmed on location at Crom Castle in Northern Ireland and will follow the Blandings family as they struggle to keep itself in order.This bit of writing brilliance has an equally as brilliant cast, headed by Jennifer Saunders (Absolutely Fabulous, Jam and Jerusalem) and Timothy Spall (Harry Potter, The King’s Speech).
In addition to Spall and Saunders, who will star as the amiable, yet befuddled, Lord Emsworth, and his indomitable sister Connie, there are both big names and relative newcomers that have been added. Mark Williams (Harry Potter, Fast Show) will play Beach, the long-suffering loyal butler to Lord Emsworth while newcomer, Jack Farthing, has been tagged as Lord Emsworth’s financially irresponsible son Freddie. David Walliams (Little Britain) will appear in a couple of episodes of Blandings as Clarence’s new secretary, Rupert Baxter.
