By Jeeves

When it came to comedy, P G Wodehouse was the consummate master of style. His creations, including Bertie Wooster and his valet Jeeves, Lord Emsworth and his Empress of Blandings and all the lesser lights of his carefully-wrought universes, are as fresh today as when he began crafting them early last century.

Writers as celebrated and diverse as Evelyn Waugh and George Orwell felt nothing odd in bowing before the Master, or 'Plum' as he was known to his friends. There was, and still is, only one Plum and his wit is still as fresh and sustaining as a freshly-pulled river-cool draught ale.

But there was another side to Plum. As well as being the consummate comic writer on either side of the Atlantic, he was also one of the leading lights of the musical stage in 1920s Broadway. With his co-writer Guy Bolton, Plum virtually invented the modern musical, with his collaborators including such great names as Jerome Kern and George Gershwin. Kern and Gershwin weren't just great names; they were pretty handy composers too.

And so, what a neat idea to celebrate this man who straddled the worlds of books and show-biz, with a specially created musical offering centred around perhaps his most famous duo, the amiable society drone Bertie Wooster and his man-servant Jeeves.

A very neat idea - it's a pity about the execution then. By Jeeves, written and directed for the stage by Alan Ayckbourn and composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber, sounds like a pastiche of both Webber and Sondheim, without sounding as good as either of them - and that's not saying much. I know Wodehouse spent almost all his adult life in America, but that's no reason to have Bertie Wooster alternating between ersatz-English and American accents. And when, halfway through this offering, I realised I had not laughed or even smiled once, I thought, "What's the point? I mean, really, what's the point? If it can't even raise a laugh or two. Eh? What's the point to it? I mean to say..."

The ordeal is staged as a village church-hall musical offering, with Bertie aided or hindered by such old acquaintances from the books as Stiffy Byng, Honoria Glossop, Gussie Fink-Nottle (without his newts) and other old pals and pursuing femmes. They can't help save this shipwreck of a concert, which is every bit as hideous as some of the concerts Wodehouse himself describes. He describes them with wit - unfortunately this exercise has none.

We get a very good anamorphic widescreen transfer, with crisp colours, nice dense colour saturation - technically, this is a quality production in every way.

The sound, although basic Dolby Digital stereo, is detailed and full of presence. It has all the fidelity a word-based musical demands.

There are two special features, and both are more interesting than the main feature. The first is a series of interviews with the dozen actors who make up the cast. The second is a standard making of featurette; it's nothing special, but more animated than the musical itself.

Overall value? Negligible.

If you like Lloyd Webber or Stephen Sondheim (who seems to be Webber's inspiration this time around) then you might find this just peachy. If you happen, as I do, to consider Wodehouse one of the funniest and gifted writers of the 20th century, you will hate this tepid offering.