Trevor Hopkins is a lecturer in English literature at a North England polytechnic, attempting to teach Woolf and Forster to a class of aggressively useless retirees and matrons. He sports an outmoded Beatle cut and thick glasses. He is perpetually uneasy; literature is not much help to Trevor. "Woolf," he tells his class, "was always asking, 'What is it like to be me, here, now?'" Trevor can't even form the question. But in the back of the class sits one Mr. Skinner of the earring and leather jacket. Skinner gets under Trevor's skin. Bennett's multi-layered narrative voice (narrator, dialogue, character voice-over) is given visual expression in this early film by Stephen Frears. Look for Thora Hird in a priceless rendition of The Mother and be glad she is not yours.