Having long since lost my video edition of this, I recently downloaded the 4-part C4 TV adaptation (1987) from iTunes and took the opportunity of watching it again... and what a fantastic piece of proper comedy-drama it is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porterhouse_Blue#TV_mini-series
Adapted from the Tom Sharpe classic, with a script by Malcolm Bradbury, it reeks (in every sense) of class. A superb cast (Ian Richardson, David Jason, a frighteningly-young John Sessions, Charles Gray - plus a role from Griff Rhys Jones) playing out a gloriously black comedy, with great production. Anyone who was too young/disinclined to see this when it first aired should definitely take a look. It's an example of what can be done with the genre when time, talent (and money) are invested.
David Jason, as Skullion, gives what I believe to be still be his best ever performance (he won the Best Actor BAFTA for it) and there are some lovely, pitch-perfect comic performances from the ensemble cast. For example, the late Lockwood West as the frail and indiscreet Chaplain, is a delight (btw, I didn't realise it until now, but he was Timothy West's father).
This is a show which C4 used to make but (to my knowledge) never bothers to give a repeat airing - probably because it would remind its viewers of a time when it produced this kind of quality on a fairly regular basis. In fact, it's probably the kind of series Stewart Lee was thinking about when he imagined "the Head of Channel 4, when he looks at the old schedules, must feel like an syphilitic elderly ladies' man leafing through a photograph album of all the society beauties he used to romance, all of them now dead. Dead because of him, because of what he did..."
