The History Boys

The History Boys (2006) — watch online on iFILM this British drama directed by Nicholas Hytner. Yorkshire, 1983. Eight grammar-school students with top marks are cramming for Oxbridge entrance exams under three teachers who cannot agree on what education is actually for.

Hector (Richard Griffiths) is an aging eccentric who believes knowledge has no proper use beyond the joy of having it. Irwin (Stephen Campbell Moore) is young, sharp, and hired specifically to teach the boys to argue against themselves — to take the obvious reading of history and find a smarter, contrarian angle for the examiners. Somewhere between them sits Mrs Lintott (Penelope Wilton), who has seen too many bright boys pass through to be surprised by any of them. The students absorb all three teachers and follow none of them cleanly.

Alan Bennett's stage play won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play, and Hytner brought the entire original National Theatre cast to the screen. It is a rare film that treats its teenage characters as genuinely intelligent without making them seem like adults in disguise. Stream The History Boys (2006) online on iFILM.