Television Review -Ripping Yarns – Tomkinson’s School Days

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BBC - 1975 Spoiler alerts This was Michael Palin's first major series after the original break up of the Monty Python comedy team as their TV shows ended. Ripping Yarns ran for just nine excellent episodes which were a parody of the Golden Age of Boy's Own story books and comics of the 1930's and 1940's. The first stand alone story remains the best and most fondly remembered. Tomkinson's School Days is an obvious parody of Tom Brown's School Days. Tomkinson is cast out of the family home into Boarding School, finding it rife with bullying, petty rules, and cruel sports. He has to fight a bear, gets chased by a leopard, and give the headmaster a good thrashing with a cane whenever he, Tomkinson does anything wrong, such as trying to escape and go home. Ian Ogilvy excels as a school bully called School Bully and awarded prizes for his bullying - with his departure looming, could Tomkinson take his role and will he be just as cruel as School Bully himself? Great gags abound, such as the school model boat building club where Tomkinson gets carried away enough to build a to scale fully functioning Norwegian Ice-Breaker. As funny today as nearly forty years ago. Arthur Chappell