After Brideshead Revisited appeared on television in 1982, everyone thought that Evelyn Waugh was a gay writer, and started buying up the original novel from 1945, as well as his other novels, Decline and Fall and Vile Bodies. Turns out that he was straight-ish, regretted the gay romances of his Oxford years, and thought of same-sex love as decadent and immoral, or at best adolescent experimentation that you give up once you are old enough for the "real love" of a woman. So I don't expect the 2017 BBC adaption of his Decline and Fall, streaming on Amazon Prime, to have any gay characters.
Or maybe not. Waugh derived the title and central theme from The Decline and Fall of the West, by Otto Spengler, which theorizes that societies inevitably decline into moral decadence. Including LGBT people. So maybe there will be some homophobia.
Scene 1: The Bollinger Club at Scone College, Oxford -- har, har -- is trashing their common room. Meanwhile, quiet theology student Paul Pennyfeather (Jack Whitehall, top photo) is sitting quietly with his friend Potts (Matthew Beard, left), who wants to go to a church tomorrow and "make some rubbings." He means rubbings of tombstones, but...har, har. Paul refuses, whereupon the friend says "I'll make some rubbings for you." I'll bet you will...
On his way home, Paul runs afoul of the Bollinger Club, who strip him naked and force him to run across the quad. Although he is not responsible, he is expelled from Oxford for "moral malfeasance."
Scene 2: Generally men sent down for moral failings become schoolmasters, and there's a position available in Llanaba, Wales, to teach English, French, German, Latin, and coach cricket. Paul doesn't speak German, but the job agent tells him to fake it.
Scene 3: Paul arrives at Llanaba, finds his way to the school, which is actually quite ornate, and is introduced to Captain Grimes (Douglas Hodge), just as he is disciplining a student for whistling. The other students were whistling, too, but "it makes no difference." He gets 100 lines, and next time a beating.
Then the Headmaster and his daughters, whom Paul snubs. Not into girls, are you? He's in charge of the fifth form (15-16 year olds), games, carpentry, and fire drill, and he'll be giving Best-Chedwyth organ lessons. "But I don't play the organ." "You do now."
Scene 4: The shabby Fifth Form classroom. Headmaster advises Paul not to mention why he was sent down, and rushes away.. The students make fun of "Good morning" and role call, lock his desk drawer, and give him trick chalk.
Scene 5: After the first class debacle, he rushes to the common room, and meets the hard-drinking Prendergast: "You'll hate it here. I do. We all do." Then to his room to unpack his stuff and be depressed.
Cut to dinner: teachers have to eat with their students. Paul is still depressed, the students still disrespectful, the food greenish slop.
Afterwards, Captain Grimes escorts him to the pub. They discuss the Headmaster's two daughters; Grimes is engaged to "the haybale," leaving "the male one" for Paul.
About the Fifth Formers: Don't try to teach them anything, just keep them quiet and beat them. Grimes isn't cut out for teaching; he keeps getting sacked at private schools for "doing things," but fortunately he's a public school alumnus so he always gets another job. In Britain, "public schools" are like the private schools in America.
During the War, he "did something" that almost resulted in a firing squad, but because he was a public school alumnus, they just transfered him to Ireland, where you can "do things" without penalty. Same-sex acts? But they wouldn't get you a death sentence in Britain at the time
The leering Philbrick (Stephen Graham, left) approaches and asks if either of them would fancy a woman tonight. You got any men? They refuse. Grimes says that he doesn't really fancy women.
More after the break
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