• Air date: 03 Jun '87 4 episodes
      In late-'80s Britain, Porterhouse College Cambridge is an anachronism, its students uniformly male and (in the vast number of cases) privately educated. When the incumbent Master dies (from a stroke brought on by overeating) the government revenges itself on Porterhouse by appointing as his successor an old graduate, the politician Sir Godber Evans. One of the tiny minority of state-school students the college has had forced on it over the years, Evans returns to his alma mater determined to drag this bastion of privilege into the twentieth century. The elderly academic staff cease their bickering and close ranks against him, but the new Master finds his most implacable and unscrupulous opponent in Skullion, the college porter.
  • List of Episodes (4)
    • 1. EPISODE 1

      03 Jun '87
      The dying Master of Porterhouse succumbs to a Porterhouse Blue - a stroke brought on by over-indulgence. In his place comes a new Master, Sir Godber Evans, an ex-grammar-school boy, failed politician and old Porterhusian, who chooses the occasion of the annual great feast to announce a major break with six centuries of college tradition: Porterhouse will open its doors to scholars!
    • 2. EPISODE 2

      10 Jun '87
      The Dean mounts an attack to counter the new master, Sir Godber Evans, who continues with his attempt to drag the college into the modern world. Meanwhile, Skullion finds an ally in old Porterhusian Sir Cathcart D'Eath, and Zipser seeks 'confidential' counselling with the Chaplain about his obsession with the buxom bedder Mrs Biggs, which is getting out of control.
    • 3. EPISODE 3

      17 Jun '87
      The new Master, Sir Godber, is in self-congratulatory mood. His plans to impose change on Porterhouse appear to have the College's traditionalist Fellows over a barrel. In response, the Dean and Sir Cathcart D'Eath bring in investigative journalist and former Porterhouse student Cornelius Carrington to help fight their corner.
    • 4. EPISODE 4

      24 Jun '87
      With a view to ending the new Master's regime, the Dean and Sir Cathcart D'Eath encourage television journalist Cornelius Carrington to make a documentary about the College. They haven't reckoned on Carrington's methods, or on Skullion's gift for 'television verite'. And nobody - not even Skullion himself - has reckoned on the head porter achieving an indelible place in the history of Porterhouse.