Jeeves in the Offing

The Jeeves and Wooster Series

By: P. G. Wodehouse

Narrated by: Ian Carmichael

Jeeves is on holiday in Herne Bay, and while he's away, the world caves in on Bertie Wooster. For a start, Bertie's astonished to read in the Times of his own engagement to the mercurial Bobbie Wickham. Then, at Brinkley Court, his Aunt Dahlia's establishment, he finds his awful former headmaster in attendance, ready to award the prizes at Market Snodsbury Grammar School. And finally the Brinkley butler turns out, for reasons of his own, to be Bertie's nemesis in disguise, the brain surgeon Sir Roderick Glossop. With all occasions informing against him, Bertie has to hightail it to Herne Bay to liberate Jeeves from his shrimping net. And after that, the fun really starts.

©1960 P.G. Wodehouse (P)2016 Blackstone Audio

Great story, cast of characters, monotonous reading

Often difficult to tell character voices apart. Obviously you can tell Wooster from Jeeves but unless a character has an overly stylized delivery (which also gets monotonous), it’s difficult to distinguish them. On the other hand, it’s practically impossible to compete with Jonathan Cecil’s recordings—

Good book

Well worth reading. I very much enjoyed this book. It was a great read.

Another great Jeeves story…..but

The narrator is no where near as good as Jonathan Cecil. For some reason Ian has Bertie with a strange stutter that is hard to bear at times. It was also difficult at times to know who was speaking as the narrator didn’t have a good range for differentiating voices.

The story is a classic Jeeves though with a little less Jeeves than usual. An enjoyable distraction from my stressful day.

It has Roberta Wickham

It has Roberta Wickham, always plus, but this isn’t one of the top of the top of the line stories.

It took me a while to get used to the voice talent. He isn’t bad. He’s just no Jonathan Cecil.

The stuttering ruined a great story.

i so wish Cecil had read it instead of the current specimen.

For some godforsaken reason Bertie is given a prominent stutter in his voice, making him sound like an imbecile instead of the much beloved character that he is.
Adding the fact that the narrator can't quite measure up to someone like Cecil to give each character their own unique voice and personality ruined it for me.

Did I tell you how fantastic Johnathan Cecil is as a Wodehouse narrator?

Fantastic book & performance

This is one of my very favorite narrators. He isn't the *only* canonically valid interpretation of Bertie, of course, but he hits so many elements of the character on the nose that he's practically perfect.

Why does Bertie stutter?

While P.G. Wodehouse’s story may make you laugh out loud, and narrator Ian Carmichael’s hilarious sendups of various bicoastal accents as well, you will almost immediately ask: Why on Earth did the latter choose to give Bertie a speech defect?

The constant stutters Carmichael builds into Bertie’s blithe blather slow down the feast of reason and flow of soul, as Jeeves would say, frustrating the fount of frivolity in a good-natured but unnecessary way.

Find another narrator - not because Carmichael isn’t fabulously talented, because he obviously is, but because this dramatic choice will drive you up the Proverbial wall.

Helpful Advice

We loved the story of course! The speaker is a little fast so we found best results by slowing it down and listening at 0.8x

Classic Wodehouse with slightly underwhelming narrator

Not a major fan of the interpretation of Bertie’s speech patterns, but thoroughly enjoyed the tale. Classic Wodehouse.

Sound quality and narrator’s performance detract from employment

If this were a full cast BBC drama from 40+ years ago, the scratchy recording with the extra breaths, clicks, gulps, hums, and mutters might be endearing. As is, this is a rough listen. The voice used for Wooster is not consistent enough in speed or tone, but, strangely, many of the characters were hard to distinguish except for the Americans. The more chaotic scenes were therefore hard to follow. If you’re a fan of the Jonathan Cecil style, best to avoid this one.