Before there was the 1987 tv adaptation of Porterhouse Blue there was a 1974 Tom Sharpe book. I had become a fan of Sharpe's work in the early 1980s. I was reading a lot of humor and read pretty much all of his books through 1986, I was even getting them from England when they weren't available here int he US. He stopped writing about 1986 and didn't have another book out for 8 years. By then I had moved on and wasn't reading much humor. I haven't bothered to re-read any of his books since those days. I believe I still have a fistful of his books left up in the attic. I'm forgetful of what was purged from the collection. Someday I will find them and maybe they'll get re-read. Maybe not.
Porterhouse Blue was adapted in 1987 and I missed it if it played on PBS. I did see another Sharpe book adapted to TV from 1985 called Blott On The Landscape. It played on PBS and I recorded a vhs tape off the broadcast and that later got transfered to dvdr. I haven't watched it for 6 or 7 years. I picked up the dvd of Porterhouse Blue from the library. Acorn Media has a two disc set out in the US. It's on NetFlix, which is where I found it first, but it being at the library allowed me to delete it from my queue. The show is 4 parts that run about 50 minutes each.
There's a school in Cambridge called Porterhouse that has a dying Master. He's supposed to pick his successor and he picks Ian Richardson who was a student along time ago. All everyone remember is they didn't like him very much and that he was the son of a butcher. A lot of the characters put a great store in the class system and I'm not talking about schooling. Ian comes to the college with his wife and they turn the place upside down with modern ideas like allowing women students and getting rid of the expensve dining room. Turns out the school is broke and it's biggest cash cow are the rich parents who buy degrees for their troublesome sons. Strictly bad form but the school needs the money for their excessive lifestyle. David Jason plays Skullion, the schools head porter, and he's one to stick to tradition. He's been at the school for 45 years and hope to die there. The excessive traditions of the school must go says the new Master and the fight is on. There are some other plot lines, like one concerning a sexually frustrated student, who's urges lead to him blowing up his room, himself, the cleaning lady who stirred those urges, and the bell tower. It was a slow moving program and not nearly as funny as I remember the novel. It was entertaining enough for the most part but I liked BOTL better. I don't know that I need to watch it again so it's not something that I would plan to purchase. Currently it's 28 bucks on Amazon. That's money I'm saving for some other crap.
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