By David Wiegand
Scripps Howard News

As George Bernard Shaw famously put it (although Oscar Wilde made a similar observation), England and the United States are two nations separated by a common language. And to that we can sometimes add, “not to mention sense of humor.”

Much of the time, Yanks get the joke — we even laughed at Benny Hill, for heaven’s sake — but there are times when the pond is just a bit too big for most of us, save the most ardent comically inclined anglophiles.

That group is likely to applaud the adaptation of George and Weedon Grossmith’s 1892 “The Diary of a Nobody,” starring the great Hugh Bonneville as clerk Charles Pooter, who aspires to a higher social station in life. Class is an omnipresent theme in British literature. It is both a frequent motive for murder, and a staple of comedies of manners.

Although Pooter prattles on about his wife, Carrie, his son Lupin and his friends, Mr. Cummings and Mr. Gowing (coming and going: get it?), this is a virtuosic one-man show and Bonneville is superb, delivering Pooter’s petty complaints and unconscious as he records them in his diary.

“I fail to see — because I do not happen to be a ‘somebody’ — why my diary should not be interesting,” he announces. The reason, of course, is that his life is unrelentingly dull, but he would be — and is — the last to know, because he’s so caught up in his puffed-up self-importance.

Yes, it is often humorous, but American audiences may tire of the jokes relatively early.