Porterhouse Blue

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

A satirical view on politics and life through the events that transpire in a conservative college at Cambridge University (UK) after the appointment of a new and liberal master. Based on a novel by Tom Sharpe, it was broadcast over UK's Channel Four in 1987 in the form of a TV mini-series.

Tropes used in Porterhouse Blue include:
  • Bilingual Bonus: The theme song is mostly in Latin, in the style of a college choir. Non-Latin speakers can usually make out the college motto 'Dives in Omnia'(which is a plot point, so they're sure to get it by about the third episode) but not the rest of the lyrics which tell the 'congregation' that the college is staffed by ignorant drunks. This is true, and something of a spoiler
  • Double Standard Rape (Female on Male): A college's only research graduate student is obsessed with his middle-aged bedder to the extent he is scared he will rape her. However, after she senses his feelings it is her who sneaks up into his room in the middle of the night and rapes him instead. They soon both die in an explosion though (as while sneaking in, she lit the gas without knowing the chimney was blocked by condoms which the student had unwittingly acquired and had tried to dispose of by filling them with gas and stuffing them up the chimney).
  • Out with a Bang: See Double Standard Rape (Female on Male).
  • Oxbridge: obviously. It's acknowledged that Porterhouse is an extreme stereotype, but when the book was written there was still more than a grain of truth in it (e.g. many colleges were still all-male).
  • Trojan Gauntlet
  • Upper Class Twit: Most students and alumni of Porterhouse.