me and tom brown

I was a huge fan of Masterpiece Theater in the 1970s and a particularly huge fan of the show’s adaptation of Thomas Hughes’ novel, Tom Brown’s Schooldays.

Of course, I was a teenaged girl and the six-part series about Rugby, an English boys’ school, was all cute boys with English accents wearing foppish clothes. And the hair! My god, you’ve never seen such marvelous haircuts, straight out of an Urban Outfitter catalog, except the faces underneath them were happy and chipper instead of haunted and morose. I wish I could show you photos, but I can find none online except this on the website of the guy in the photo—cute little Anthony Murphy who played Tom himself. Now he’s a painter in France and good one, I think.

But anyway trust me. Cute boys, good hair, cool clothes and a morality play. What’s not to like?

I loved, loved, loved the miniseries when it ran and saw it a few times. I even wrote a fan letter to Anthony Murphy. Somewhere I have the photo of him I received in return (I can’t recall if it was autographed). Back then, before VCRs, I actually taped it on a cassette audio tape as my only way of preserving the joy.

I rented the series from Netflix recently, with some trepidation. Would it be good as I remembered?

Oh joy. It was every bit as wonderful as I remembered, maybe even more so. Twinkle-eyed Tom Brown is fair, honest and mischievous. His mate Ned East is as upright and loyal a buddy as you could hope for. Poor Diggs’ plain face fair glows with goodness, even though he hasn’t two farthings to rub together. Cutherbertson—oooh, that Cuthberston—is a squirrely little weasel with a lisp and a Little Lord Fauntleroy collar. And Flashman is an all-time great dastardly sexy villain. He is so bad, especially when he roasts young Tom over the fireplace. But when he laughs his wicked laugh, he has dimples to die for.

Tom Brown’s Schooldays is the testosterone version of the Victorian book that inspired the values by which I live, A Little Princess. That story took place in a girls’ school and the torture was poverty and mocking rather than the more brutal and physical torments the boys of Rugby inflict on each other. But the themes are the same: indomitable spirit, stoicism and dignity in the face of injustice (well, Tom did become a vomiting drunk for a while after Flashman framed him, but he got better) and the triumph of good over evil. Hokey as they are, Tom Brown and especially Sara Crewe are the heroes after whom I have always tried to model myself.

And all that aside, Tom Brown’s Schooldays is a ripping yarn. With great hair.