A few weeks back I came across the old film, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, the one from 1939 with Robert Donat, not the later awful musical version with Peter O’Toole. It’s a very sweet chronicle of a schoolmaster’s life at a British upper crust boarding school, the type of film that would never be made today. Watching it, however, reminded me of another such story.
In the 1970’s Michael Palin, in his post-Monty Python days, did a short series for the BBC that consisted of half hour episodes, each a different story with him as the main character in each. It was called Ripping Yarns. Seeing Mr. Chips reminded of one such episode called Tomkinson’s Schooldays which tells of a young student’s trials and tribulations in such a school.
I remember seeing it 30 years ago or so and laughing very hard and still use references from it. I have been wanting to revisit it all these many years and I always look for it but it never seems to resurface. But of course, I hadn’t checked Youtube. With a few clicks, there it was, in several parts.
It was as funny as I remembered. Here is the first part of Tomkinson’s Schooldays and for those of you who enjoy Python-like humor, you can see the rest on Youtube.
Redtree Times 