Across the pond

Thanks to BBC Four an upbeat end to a rainy British bloody Sunday. Watched the first part of the 1970s television version of The History Man. Anthony Scher leapt around the screen as the gum-chewing Howard, the lecherous lecturer of Sociology. Malcolm Bradbury’s novel is full of the venom he felt as the Angry Young Men of the 1950s grew up to take power in the permissive society. The skinny Howard has abandoned his books and the lecture format to concentrate on teaching the students to think for themselves and express their ideas spontaneously in cosy seminars.

Howard is enjoying the good life. Driving his minivan around the lily pond on the campus of one of the new universities (Sussex or East Anglia?). Basking in the adulation of the young female students, only too eager to join him in bonking games. Launching his own revolutionary ideas on a sea of cheap wine and pot.

It is all a romp, until the last few minutes of last night’s episode when an over-serious young male student staggers into the seminar and insists on trying to read a paper discussing the ideas of Marx and Weber. Howard humiliates him but he stands his ground and asks Howard to re-read his essays, which Howard has failed. Howard explodes with rage, and the professor, played by Michael Hordern, has been called in to adjudicate.

Can’t wait to see what happens in next week’s episode. But last night BBC Four brought me right up to date with a 2009 interview with the real Anthony Scher, a rotund and genial figure, now a knight of the realm, and holding his audience by wit and wisdom.

Even Malcolm Bradbury would have been impressed.