Starter For 10 Screening

“Ever since I can remember, I’ve wanted to be clever,” Brian Jackson confesses in voice over at the beginning of Starter For 10. A working-class student from Essex navigating his first year at Bristol University, Brian has a lot to prove. While his hometown mates worry about him turning into a poncey wanker, Brian’s biggest concern is making the team for the long-running British television quiz show University Challenge. (The game show, which began in 1962 and is something like the UK’s answer to Jeopardy, pits four-member teams from posh universities against each other. “Starter” questions, worth ten points each, give the film its title.)

Amidst Tarts & Vicars dances, anti-Apartheid rallies, minging dorm rooms and puffs of marijuana smoke, Brian also finds himself romantically torn between two very different co-eds: ultra-fit blonde bombshell and University Challenge teammate Alice, and thoughtful, politically-conscious Rebecca Epstein.

With Margaret Thatcher’s economically depressed Blighty as a backdrop, and a killer, pitchperfect New Wave soundtrack—featuring music by The Cure, Wham!, Bananarama, Yaz, The Smiths, New Order, Tears For Fears, Echo and the Bunnymen, The Buzzcocks, and The Psychedelic Furs—in the foreground, STARTER FOR TEN is the great British teen 80s movie that never was...

It is also altogether delightful, with UK comedy sensation Catherine Tate co-starring as Brian’s steadfast mum, and McAvoy delivering the kind of charming, humorous performance that reinvigorates a genre. Though Brian Jackson knows everything, like all honest coming-of-age stories, STARTER FOR TEN is ultimately about its hero discovering the difference between knowledge and wisdom.

This film is rated PG-13.

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