Friday 23 January 2015

71 Tom Brown's Schooldays


First  watched  :  November 1971

This  was  the  first  of  the  Sunday  teatime  classic  adaptations  I  can  recall .  It  started  on  14th  November  1971  and  ran  for  5  weeks.  I'm  not  sure  I  watched  it  right  through  but  I  remember  it  because  the  bullying  scenes  really  shook  me  up.  I  was  already  intimidated  by  older  boys  so  this  tapped  right  into  that  fear. The  scene   I  remember  most  is  the  one  where  Tom  is  "roasted"  by  being  held  in  front  of  the  fire  for  refusing  to  hand  over  his  ticket  in  a  sweepstake. With  having  a  younger  sister  it  wouldn't  have  been  long  since  we  took  our  fireguards  down  if  indeed  we  had  at  this  point   so  the  scene  was  truly  terrifying.

While  you  might  expect  the  cast  to  be  full  of  future  stars  it  wasn't. Anthony  Murphy  who  played  Tom  never  appeared  in  anything  else  according  to  IMDB  and  Simon  Fisher  Turner  who  played  his  mate  is  better  known  as  a  composer. The  star  was  probably  Richard  Morant as  Flashman ;  his  career  peaked  early  in  Poldark  and  he  was  just  a  jobbing  actor  thereafter. Future  Dr  Who  girl  Louise  Jameson  had  a  small  role  in  the  first  episode.

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