St. Trinian’s series

(On TV, October 2019) British film history is rife with movies with a very peculiar sense of humour, turning dramatic subjects in excuses for unusual comedy and oddball characters. The first iteration of The Belles of St. Trinian’s wasn’t an original movie concept (it was based on a series of comic drawings), but it certainly embraces the counter-intuitive appeal of the concept: A finishing school for girls where, in the series’ most defining quote, “At most schools, girls are sent out quite unprepared for a merciless world but, when our girls leave here, it is the merciless world which has to be prepared.”  Our mildly delinquent fourth-form girls here have to fight against the overly delinquent sixth-form girls as their actions threaten the school. Horse kidnapping, nitroglycerin-making and overall mischief are involved. It’s all delightfully amoral, testing the boundaries of conventional boarding school movies and leaving plenty of space for solid British deadpan comedy. While the formula is a bit unformed (later St. Trinian’s movies would pit the school against outside opponents), it’s a good one and there’s little wonder why the film series was rebooted in 2004.