The History Man

I remember seeing this when it was first shown on the BBC in 1981/82 Iloved it at the time or maybe it was the sex and the music I liked. Saw it again when it was repeated on cable and did not like it so much. Written by an academic who said he was apolitical it is all about Howard a extreme left wing history lecturer (so the title says be he sounds like a sociologist to me maybe it was the same thing in the 1970s mind) anyway Howard is a political poseur ,he spouts a lot of stuff about compassion but he bullies students who don't share his views,ignores those that do and sleeps with any women who will have him,which is most of them. Veronica Quilligan is great as a young student who realises that Howard is evil. The whole cast is good and it is well made. Think it is filmed at University Of East Anglia at Norwich which is an ugly concrete campus. I liked it but it is more style than substance,for a really great British campus see "A VERY PECULIAR PRACTISE,set and made in the 1980s.

I saw this for the first time just recently (by virtue of BBC4) and was massively impressed. I am a sucker for 70's and early 80's television generally but found the standard of acting exceptional even for those days.

If anything, the feel of the programme came across as closer to 1981 when it was made than its early 1970's setting, but that makes little difference. The biting satire of the novel - ruthlessly executed here by Anthony Sher with marvellous support, most notably, from Michael Hordern and Paul Brooke - is against a culture that existed in both eras. Having been born at the start of the 70's, I remember with hazy fondness the post 60's pseudo hippie types exemplified by Sher's principal character, Howard Kirk. Kirk's profound hypocrisy and, in the words of the text itself, "moral turpitude" provide the subtext for the piece, and are conveyed by Sher with sublime subtlety. The character is, most of all, cunning, not least with regard to his attempted manipulation of the various young women lured into his sphere of operation. The word predatory is perhaps overused nowadays, but is applicable here nonetheless.

The novel, I firmly believe, was based on Sussex University and Brighton. Sadly, the student radicalism and "crusty" protest culture of the 70's and 80's, which clung on in Brighton longer than most places, is pretty much dead there also. Perhaps this digresses from the subject but the History Man reminded me of a time before the bland apathy of New Labour's Britain had set in and politics mattered. Students were students rather than just consumers with bigger overdrafts.

However, nostalgia aside, the History Man is superb production and will hopefully be out on DVD in the near future (for consumers like myself to buy).