Robert Knights – Malcolm Bradbury’s The History Man (1980)

Quote:
A thoroughly superb four-part comedy-drama series, The History Man is considered a pivotal literary and television work and one of the most fondly-remembered of all Malcolm Bradbury’s output.

Bradbury had always prided himself on stories concerning, criticising and critiquing academic culture and the proliferation of “new” university campuses which were dotted across the United Kingdom at the time. The History Man featured one such “new” educational establishment, the University of Watermouth, as the platform for the tale of Barbara and Howard Kirk (Geraldine James and Anthony Sher), an exploration of their very modern marriage and considerably radical political views.

However, this was essentially the starting-point of the series, which branched out into an acerbic observation of the complexities of academic life, ranging from tedious meetings to bureaucratic nightmares, bizarre workplace relations to corruption at its height and disruption at its base. An attractive and compelling story of radical student life, the Machiavellian powers-that-be within student life and within the educational organisation itself, the essential dramatic drive manisfested itself through Howard Kirk, a sociology lecturer at Watermouth not averse to using the tools of his trade (namely sex and politics) to secure his own position within the establishment and, indeed, further it to some extent.
He lectures students to become far more radical and less complacent, whilst all the time working tirelessly to ensure his own position remains unchanged.

The series became an examination on the abuses and power within an organisation fundamentally concerned with ridiculous micro-management (as portrayed in tedious meetings about nothing in particular), and Kirk soon finds himself fighting for his own survival and using his students, his political rhetoric and his sexual magnetism to ensure that he emerges triumphant in a power struggle with his back-biting colleagues.

The novel upon which the series was based, which earned Bradbury the Heinemann Award alongside the television commission, proved a lengthy read of purple prose (of which the writer himself was critically acclaimed), was and still is considered the definitive article, yet under the adaptation of Christopher Hampton, the production of experienced hand Michael Wearing and directorial expertise of Robert Knights, the series proved to be one of BBC Television’s most high-profile products throughout the early 1980s.

The series boasted notable supporting performances from the likes of Isla Blair, Laura Davenport, Maggie Steed, Miriam Margolyes, Zienia Merton and Peter Hugo Daly. The series was globally exported, but the limit of its commercial release was Malcolm Bradbury’s best-selling novel upon which the series was based. The History Man series has never been commercially available in any format.

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https://nitro.download/view/368471229A9334A/The_History_Man_1980_dvb_NiX.avi

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None