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Five Modern Homages to Jeeves!

PG Wodehouse’s memorable creation,  is a highly implausible pairing—not romantic, not quite friendship but something immeasurably greater—that of that incomparable lounger and shining light  of the Drones Club, Bertie Wooster and his valet, Jeeves.
‘Valet’  may be his official job designation, but he is so much more—father figure, nurse, guardian angel and all-round messiah to Bertie and his many bumbling friends, extricating them from multiple capers and bad decisions-money, thievery and marriage.
Jeeves and Wooster live on through modern literary tributes, TV shows and through the ‘bumbling master-supremely efficient staff’   trope still used in so much modern media.
 
Jeeves and the King of Clubs-Ben Schott
This is a magnificent new homage to Jeeves and Wooster, that leads them through an uproarious adventure of espionage through the secret corridors of Whitehall, the sunlit lawns of Brinkley Court, and the private clubs of St James’s.  As storm clouds loom over Europe and the very security of the nation is in peril-it seems that Jeeves has long been an agent of British Intelligence, but now His Majesty’s Government must turn to the one man who can help . . . Bertie Wooster. We encounter an unforgettable cast of characters – old and new – including outraged chefs and exasperated aunts, disreputable politicians and gambling bankers, slushy debs and Cockney cabbies, sphinx-like tailors, and sylph-like spies.
Jeeves & the King of Clubs is essential reading for aficionados of The Master, and a perfect introduction to the joys of Jeeves and Wooster for those who have never before dipped their toe.
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The classic television adaptation-Jeeves and Wooster
This is the show that made Laurie and Fry one of the ultimate dream-teams, almost as perfect  as Jeeves and Wooster, Laurel and hardy or (as Wodehouse would have put it) eggs and b. The episodes keep the deliciously Jazz-Age nonchalance of the novels while the irresistible charm and chemistry of Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie is the perfect recreation of the eternal chemistry of Jeeves and Wooster.
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Wake-Up, Sir! by Jonathan Ames
From the creator of the HBO series Bored to Death, the story of a young alcoholic writer and his personal valet, a hilarious homage to the Bertie and Jeeves novels of P.G. Wodehouse.
Alan Blair, the hero of Wake Up, Sir!, is a young, loony writer with numerous problems of the mental, emotional, sexual, spiritual, and physical variety. He’s very good at problems. But luckily for Alan, he has a personal valet named Jeeves, who does his best to sort things out for his troubled master. And Alan does find trouble wherever he goes. He embarks on a perilous and bizarre road journey, his destination being an artists’ colony in Saratoga Springs. There Alan encounters a gorgeous femme fatale who is in possession of the most spectacular nose in the history of noses. Such a nose can only lead to a wild disaster for someone like Alan, and Jeeves tries to help him, but…well, read the book and find out!
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Jeeves and the Wedding Bells-Sebastian Faulks
A gloriously witty novel from Sebastian Faulks using P.G. Wodehouse’s much-loved characters, Jeeves and Wooster, fully authorised by the Wodehouse estate.
Bertie Wooster is staying at the stately home of Sir Henry Hackwood in Dorset. He is more than familiar with the country-house set-up: he is a veteran of the cocktail hour and, thanks to Jeeves, his gentleman’s personal gentleman, is never less than immaculately dressed.
On this occasion, however, it is Jeeves who is to be seen in the drawing room while Bertie finds himself below stairs – which he doesn’t care for at all. His predicament is, of course, all in the name of love …
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A film homage to the master-valet pairing-Arthur (1981)
Featuring Sir John Gielgud as Hobson- a Jeeves-esque  valet to Dudley Moores’s Arthur, the classic ‘happy drunk’ playboy-the movie takes one through a crazy ride of finding love amid wealth, prostitution and substance abuse in the hedonism and excess of 1980s America.
The film won writer Steve Gordon an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay and the Writer’s Guild of America award for Best Comedy Written Directly for the Screen.
(Read more about this story here)
 
 

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