Tom Brown's Schooldays

Tom Brown's Schooldays (1971)

Genres - Drama  |   Sub-Genres - Coming-of-Age  |   Run Time - 45 min.  |   Countries - United Kingdom  |  
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Synopsis by Hal Erickson

Previously filmed in 1940 and 1950, Thomas Hughes' classic novel Tom Brown's Schooldays was given its most faithful rendering in this British-miniseries adaptation. Set in the 1820s, the story focused on Tom Brown (Anthony Murphy), the easygoing son of a country squire, who received his first taste of the harsher things in life when he was packed off to rugby boarding school. Quickly running up against what one of his schoolmasters described as "great tedium relieved only by moments of brutality," Tom was singled out for persecution by snobbish, sadistic upperclassman Gerald Flashman (Richard Morant). Before ultimately turning the tables on this youthful tyrant, Tom was framed on a theft charge, obliging pretty Rosy Redman (Valerie Holliman) to risk the arrest of her poacher father to save the hero from expulsion and disgrace. Originally broadcast in seven 25-minute instalments by BBC1 in 1971, Tom Brown's Schooldays was reedited as five hour-long episodes when it was shown as part of the American public-TV anthology Masterpiece Theatre beginning January 14, 1973.

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Keywords

boarding-school, frame-up, poacher, upper-class