Jeeves and Wooster is a British comedy drama television series adapted by CliveExton from P.G.Wodehouse’s “Jeeves” stories. The series was a collaboration between Brian Eastman and Granada Television. It aired on the ITV network from 22 April 1990 to 20 June 1993, with the last series nominated for a BAFTA for Best Drama Series. Set in the UK and the US in an unspecified period between the late 1920s and the 1930s, the series starred Hugh Laurie as Bertie Wooster, an affable young gentleman and member of the idle rich, and Stephen Fry as Jeeves, his highly intelligent and competent valet. Bertie and his friends, who are mainly members of the Drones Club, are extricated from all manner of societal misadventures by the indispensable Jeeves.
The theme (called “Jeeves and Wooster”) is an original piece of music in the jazz/swing style written by composer Anne Dudley for the programme. Dudley uses variations of the theme as a basis for all of the episodes’ scores and was nominated for a British Academy Televison Award for her work on the third series. She is an English composer, keyboardist, conductor and pop musician. She was the first BBC Concert Orchestra’s Composer in Association in 2001.] She has worked in the classical and pop genres, as a film composer, and was one of the core members of the synthpop band Art of Noise. In 1998, Dudley won an Oscar for Best Original Musical or Comedy Score for The Full Monty. In addition to over twenty other film scores, in 2012 she served as music producer for the film version of Les Miserables, also acting as arranger and composing some new additional music.
Whilst the theme tune only last for approximately one minute, fuller versions abound some almost identical to the original and others taking the tune and adding their own particular style and instrumentation. Here are the West Philadelphia gypsy jazz ensemble Belleville/Octomonkey. Marina Vishnyakova on the violin, Zachary Fay and Alban Bailly on the guitars, Matt Stein on the bass.
The Trafalgar Trio perform the theme song from the “Jeeves and Wooster” TV series as an Encore to their concert. St Alfege Church, Greenwich, London 2013. The tune has obviously become a favourite party piece for trios and string quartets. Here the Dudley String Quartet share their slighlty more staid version which they have added to their repertoire for weddings.
Urban IV has chosen to transpose the theme to guitar, instead of the usual brass and strings. It strength of the tune is that it stands up well to the transition.
“Rhapsody” Brest Regional Philharmonic Society from Russia have taken the theme and identified it as a fixtrot. However it changes tempo quite a bit here…everyone is having a race against each other. The use of actual footage from the series as a backdrop to the players works well.
We even now have a pandemic version also from Russian provided by Artviola.
