Series satirises trendy academics

Press, 17 June 1986, Page 15

Series satirises trendy academics

Dr Howard Kirk is a trendy sociology lecturer, a successful author of books on sex, a regular face on television, and a self-appointed revolutionary activist. He has a taste’ for confrontation and sees himself as a prince of all the radicals and a maker of history. Malcolm Bradbury’s award-winning satirical novel “The History Man,” adapted in a four-part serial by Christopher Hampton (Two, 10 p.m.), has. made Dr Kirk (as played by Antony Sher) one of the most talked about non-heroes on television. He has the kind of hypnotically attractive' nastiness of J.R. of “Dallas," a Machiavelli of the campus set whose avowed intent is manipulation and disruption. The setting is the fic-

tional and fashionable Watermouth University at the start of the autumn term where Kirk, helped by his wife Barbara (Geraldine James), is planning to fan the flames of revolution against the Establishment by imposing his radical views, helping to organise student riots with rumours and trampling on the rights of others in the name of ideology.

The Kirks have an “open marriage” with agreed extra-marital affairs and individual freedom, but they are too busy with protests and politics and throwing radical parties to notice they are drifting apart. The satirical swipe at academic trendies is significantly set in the year 1972. It was the residue of the swinging sixties, but before inflatiop, the energy crisis or unemployment had started to bite. The undoubted pivot of the series is Antony Sher as Howard Kirk. He looks more like a pop star than a don, sporting long sideburns and a Mexican moustache, and moving with snake-hipped grace in his bell-bottomed jeans and skin-tight T-shirts. He captures the essence of the consummate manipulator where political power and women are concerned and his air of arrogant self-confidence is exactly on target.