Admittedly, Wodehouse is difficult to dramatize. Two good dramatizations have appeared in the years since this series went out ("Heavy Weather" with none other than Peter O'Toole becoming the embodiment of Lord Emsworth and Sam West as a perfectly vacuous Monty Bodkin; and "Piccadilly Jim" with Sam Rockwell in a "steampunk" alternative 1930s); but much of Wodehouse's humor relies on a narration practically impossible to duplicate. How does one dramatize the character description, "if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled"? John Alderton, while affable, is hardly in O'Toole's class as an actor; though he is shaped perfectly for Wodehouse, he mugs too much. His wife, Pauline Collins, has an annoying difficulty with her "r" sounds. They apparently do these shows before a live audience, making them look stagey and full of inappropriate pauses for laughter. This is unfortunate as sometimes Wodehouse's lines fall flat (Wodehouse wrote extensively for the stage but his short stories were for reading purposes).
Wisely, they veered away from the most popular Wodehouse series (no Bertie Wooster or Blandings) and stick mainly to Mulliner and "golf" stories (though Wodehouse has so many cross-overs, some characters from the other series appear, notably when Collins fails to impress as Bobbie Wickham in "Mister Potter Takes a Rest Cure"). Because many of Wodehouse's minor characters feel similar, they lend themselves to this series' rep.-company ambiance.
Many familiar supporting-role faces crop up here and there: Raymond Huntley, Colin Jeavons, Thorley Walters, Jonathan Cecil, etc.) but even these talented chaps fall flat on their face occasionally (as when William Mervyn, as the oldest member, doing his best with lines that sound better on the page than on the stage, winds up giving vain pauses for laughter that doesn't come).
They mean well, and the tales are presented in the innocence Wodehouse intends. They simply haven't the technology for a smoother presentation, and the very unreality Wodehouse achieves on the page often undercuts literal execution. And while Wodehouse moved freely among acting folk between the wars and therefore used many actors as characters in these stories, Collins, an actress who has found some renown since, is at her worst portraying actresses.
A few episodes stand out as classics; notably "Unpleasantness at Bludleigh Court" (though Collins with her speech defect has difficulty selling Wodehouse's hilarious poem); and at least one episode IMPROVES on Wodehouse as it builds to a climax ("The Code of the Mulliners").
By coincidence, the series first showed in America very shortly after I became a Wodehouse addict in the ninth grade. The first few shows have the Master himself introducing the episodes (in clips filmed shortly before his untimely death at 93), and I was disappointed that I could barely understand a word said by this most literate of writers.