bad education

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Bad Education

Comedy series about a teacher who is a bigger kid than the kids he teaches. Comedy series about a teacher who is a bigger kid than the kids he teaches. Comedy series about a teacher who is a bigger kid than the kids he teaches.

• Jack Whitehall
• Layton Williams
• Mathew Horne
• Charlie Wernham
• 41 User reviews
• 3 Critic reviews
• 3 nominations

Episodes 33

Top cast 99+

• Stephen Carmichael

• Shaquille Fraser
• Mitchell Harper

• Alfie Wickers
• Leslie 'Rem Dogg' Remmington

• Joe Poulter
• Chantelle Parsons

• Rosie Gulliver

• Frank Grayson

• Bernadette Hoburn

• Isobel Pickwell
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• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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• Trivia Alfie is said to have lost out to Emma Watson for the role of Hermione in Harry Potter. Jack Whitehall auditioned for the role of Harry for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. (2001).
• Connections Featured in The Wright Stuff: Episode #17.175 (2012)

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• Runtime 30 minutes

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Bad Education

Where to watch.

Watch Bad Education with a subscription on Max, rent on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV, or buy on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV.

What to Know

Anchored by an outstanding Hugh Jackman, Bad Education finds absurd laughs -- and a worthy message -- in the aftermath of a real-life scandal.

Critics Reviews

Audience reviews, cast & crew.

Cory Finley

Hugh Jackman

Frank Tassone

Allison Janney

Pam Gluckin

Kathrine Narducci

Sharon Katz

Geraldine Viswanathan

Rachel Kellog

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What ‘Bad Education’ Got Right — and Wrong — About the Real-Life Scandal

By Ej Dickson

The only thing better than a fictionalized version of a real-life scandal is one that prominently features Long Island accents, and HBO ‘s Bad Education  ticks all those boxes and more. Based on a mid-2000s scandal in Roslyn, a well-off suburb of New York City, the movie tells the story of Superintendent Frank Tassone (a brilliantly creepy Hugh Jackman), a superficially charming and ambitious school superintendent who is arrested for embezzling millions from the school district. The case involved multiple arrests and millions of dollars, and would later become known as the largest school embezzlement scandal in U.S. history.

The film depicts how for years, Tassone and his second-in-command Pamela Gluckin (Allison Janney) brazenly used school funds to pay for their lavish lifestyles, which for Tassone included face lifts and first-class flights to London with his much younger boyfriend. Yet because the school has a high Ivy League admit rate, Tassone avoids the notice of authorities, until a dogged high school reporter (Geraldine Viswanathan) blows the lid off the scandal. Eventually, Tassone was sentenced to four to 10 years in prison, and was released on good behavior in 2010. Gluckin was sentenced to three to nine years in prison for stealing $4.9 million; she was released in 2011, and died in 2017.

Bad Education  is based on a  New York  magazine story by reporter Robert Kolker , and for the most part the film is relatively faithful to its source material. Yet there are a few key deviations, with the real-life Tassone taking umbrage with some details of Jackman’s portrayal of him. Here are just a few things the movie got right — and wrong — about the scandal.

1) Tassone did indeed throw Pamela Gluckin under the bus while concealing the extent of his own embezzlement. 

According to Bad Education,  Pamela Gluckin’s embezzlement is discovered when her son rings up a hefty tab from a hardware store, charging it to the school’s credit card; she is later confronted by members of the school board and Tassone, a longtime friend of hers, who refers to her as a “sociopath” before calling for her resignation. He then convinces the school board not to report the theft to the authorities, for fear of hurting Roslyn High School’s reputation and college acceptance numbers.

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Per Kolker’s article, this confrontation — and Tassone’s betrayal of Gluckin — is fairly close to what actually happened. Unlike in the film, however, it took a full two years after Gluckin was fired for Tassone to be investigated for his own misdeeds. Even after her firing came to light, Tassone continued to deflect blame, allowing angry parents to target their ire at the school board for covering it up, rather than at him. “[He] was seen by Roslynites as valiantly coming to the board’s defense, telling everyone who would listen how upset he was, how betrayed they all felt by Gluckin,” Kolker writes for New York  magazine.

2) Both Tassone and Gluckin were extremely brazen about their purchases.

The movie depicts both Tassone and Gluckin flagrantly flaunting their lavish lifestyles. Gluckin is depicted as particularly egregious, hosting guests in the Hamptons at one of her three homes, and blithely tossing around the school credit card to pay for her niece’s PlayStation. Indeed, it does appear that both Gluckin and Tassone were pretty blatant about their purchasing habits, with Gluckin driving around in a Jaguar with the vanity plate DUNENUTN (a detail that’s thankfully captured in the film) and Tassone using $56,645 of schools funds to pay for a Manhattan weight-loss doctor. His predilection for cosmetic surgery was also well noted by parents.

From Kolker’s New York  magazine article: “Says one parent: ‘Suddenly it’s not Frank in a Ford Taurus with his pants way up to here — it’s Frank with his hair slicked back and a face-lift.’ Parents and teachers couldn’t fail to notice long light scars behind his ears. A few years into his tenure, he showed up to a parents’ meeting with small bruises around both eyes. He said he had been boxing, but people in Roslyn know an eye tuck when they see one.”

3) The character of Rachel Bhagavra is a composite of the Hilltop Beacon ‘s staff. 

One of the most shocking aspects of the scandal, as depicted by Bad Education,  is that it was uncovered not by the mainstream press, but by a high school newspaper — specifically, one dogged student journalist (Viswanathan) at the  Hilltop Beacon,  who breaks the story despite being discouraged by the paper’s senior staff and by Tassone himself.

Watch Hugh Jackman Face Up to Corruption in 'Bad Education' Trailer

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It’s absolutely true that the student newspaper the  Hilltop Beacon  broke the story, which was later picked up nationwide. But Bjahavra herself is not based on a real person, screenwriter Mike Magovsky told Slate , referring to her as “a part composite, part invention meant to be an audience surrogate who is finding out information with us.” She appears to be in part based on Rebekah Rombom, then-editor-in-chief of the  Beacon , who wrote an article for the  New York Times  discussing how the paper broke the story.

According to her account, her reporting didn’t arise from being assigned to another “puff piece,” as is depicted in the film; rather, she and her co-editor received a tip that an anonymous letter was floating around accusing a school district employee (later identified as Gluckin) of stealing money. The letter prompted the board of education to call for an emergency meeting, which was attended and reported on by Rombom. “I believe it was inevitable that this story would have surfaced eventually. All we did was push it there a little faster,” she wrote.

4) Tassone was not closeted, nor did he date a former student.

In the movie, Tassone is seen flirting with a Las Vegas bartender named Kyle (Rafael Casal), whom he recognizes as a former student of his. Tassone then has an affair with Kyle, jetting back and forth from New York to Vegas and flying him first-class to London, unbeknownst to his longtime partner Tom (as portrayed by Stephen Spinella, whose name was changed in the film from Steven).

Kyle is actually a fictionalized version of Tassone’s former boyfriend Jason Daughterty, a 32-year-old former exotic dancer with whom Tassone actually purchased a house. He was not Tassone’s former student, and in an interview with the Coach Mike podcast, Tassone seemed to take particular umbrage with that aspect of the film’s portrayal. He also took issue with the fact that the film portrayed him as closeted, going to great lengths to conceal his sexual orientation by keeping a photo of his deceased wife on his desk. (He also denies that his partner didn’t know about his boyfriend and that he had an open marriage.)

“I’m not ashamed of being a gay man, and again, they made it seem somewhat sordid,” Tassone said. “That bothered me and upset me when the detective questioned [husband] Steven, and he implied that Steven didn’t even know I was married. That was not the case. And I don’t understand why they had to bring my sexuality into the film.”

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Bad Education

Pushy parents basking in the reflected glory of driving their kids toward extreme excellence is not exactly a new phenomenon. Long before the college admissions scandal that brought down corporate executives and Hollywood stars alike, the pursuit of academic superiority—real or imagined—has inspired perfectly sensible people to go to insane lengths. The right neighborhood with the right schools, a packed schedule of the right kinds of activities and athletics—it’s all to achieve the greater goal of sending their children to the right Ivy League university which will prepare them for the right lucrative career.

The top administrators at the Roslyn, New York, school district seemed not only to understand this instinct but also to exploit it for their own personal gain. “ Bad Education ” explores their real-life embezzlement scheme, which came crashing down when the high-school newspaper broke the story in 2004. Spending nearly $8 million on a sky bridge to beautify a campus seems reasonable when you’re trying to exude an aura of success—when you’re the fourth-ranked district in the country, gunning for that No. 1 spot. With that much money flying around, skimming a little here and there for a bagel or jewelry or renovations on your beach house in the Hamptons is no biggie.

Director Cory Finley finds the dark humor within this scandal, which he depicts with wit, style and a terrific cast. Hugh Jackman does some of the best work of his long and varied career as the superintendent, Dr. Frank Tassone, whose charisma and polished image disguised a multitude of secrets. Jackman plays on his usual charm and looks to great effect. But there’s something sinister within the slickness that’s unsettling from the first time we see him, spritzing cologne and trimming nose hairs in the mirror of the boys’ bathroom in extreme close-up. Frank clearly cares deeply and works hard to recall names and personal details of students and parents alike throughout the district; we can still see glimmers of the calling that drew him to this challenging profession in the first place. Fundamentally, he’s a pleaser and he wants to be liked—yet increasingly, he savors the fame and power that come with being in a position of authority in an affluent community. And as Frank and his second-in-command (played brilliantly by a brash Allison Janney ) find themselves squirming to survive when their $11.2 million scheme comes to light, their flaws and follies become even more glaringly evident.

Finley’s follow-up to “ Thoroughbreds ,” one of my favorite films of 2018, doesn’t seek to dazzle with sleek, showy camerawork like that film did. But it’s similarly interested in mining the depths of out darkest impulses, and doing so with sharp satire. ( Mike Makowsky , who was a middle school student in Roslyn when the embezzlement scandal broke, wrote the script.) “Bad Education” also calls to mind the great Alexander Payne film “ Election ,” with its students who are smarter and savvier than you’d expect and teachers who aren’t as mature and responsible as you’d hope. Finley actually could have used a bit more of Payne’s sharp bite in tackling this material. Geraldine Viswanathan radiates a quiet but increasingly assertive confidence as the high school reporter whose tough questions and thorough document searches reveal the district’s financial irregularities. Just as compelling as what she finds is her internal debate over how to handle that information. She knows what’s the right thing to do—but what if that’s the wrong move for her future?

That’s the dilemma that also plagues the school board members—led by a vividly haggard Ray Romano —when they first learn of the administrators’ indiscretions. Going public would not only jeopardize the standing of the school district nationwide, it also would damage its reputation locally, which would make it harder for high-school seniors to gain acceptance at top universities, which would cause property values to plummet.

For a long time, Jackman keeps us guessing as to the amount of Frank’s knowledge and the depth of his involvement. Janney’s Pam Gluckin chats casually about flagrant misuse of her district credit card over the buzz of the blender as she mixes margaritas. (And the film’s costume and production design find just the right amount of Long Island tacky and flashy without diving over the top into parody.) Frank, on the other hand, contains myriad, fascinating multitudes. As Jackman gets older, he seems less interested in getting us to like him and more inclined to play complicated characters who make questionable decisions. Wildly violent as his Wolverine may be in the “ X-Men ” universe—particularly in the excellent, standalone “ Logan ”—he’s still essentially a hero. “Bad Education” gives him the chance to play someone who may be doing some truly bad things, and you can tell he’s really sinking his claws into the role this time.

Premieres on HBO on Saturday, 4/25.

Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series “Ebert Presents At the Movies” opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

• Hugh Jackman as Frank Tassone
• Allison Janney as Pam Gluckin
• Ray Romano as Bob Spicer
• Alex Wolff as Nick Fleischman
• Geraldine Viswanathan as Rachel Kellog
• Cory Finley
• Louise Ford

Cinematographer

• Lyle Vincent
• Michael Abels
• Mike Makowsky

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Bad Education

  TV-MA | Biographical Dramas | 1 HR 49 MIN | 2019

A respected Long Island school superintendent (Hugh Jackman) and his assistant (Allison Janney) turn up in a massive embezzlement scheme.

‘Bad Education’: Film Review

Hugh Jackman delivers an acting master class, trading on his charismatic star persona to reveal the rotten core of bad-apple superintendent Frank Tassone.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

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Going forward, what will Hollywood do when it needs a Kevin Spacey type? The disgraced Oscar winner is precisely the actor a movie like “ Bad Education ” calls for: Cory Finley ’s audacious second feature centers on the true story of Frank Tassone, district superintendent of the Roslyn School District in Long Island, N.Y. — a hero to parents and students alike, responsible for turning Roslyn High into one of the state’s top-achieving public schools, while exploiting the trust the community put in him. It’s a tricky, two-faced role that calls for the kind of firm-handshake, direct-eye-contact duplicity Spacey brought to “House of Cards” and half a dozen movies before it. Go ahead, Google “Frank Tassone” and tell me that I’m wrong.

Now, Hugh Jackman isn’t the actor I would’ve expected to fill those shoes. He’s more movie star than character actor, and this role presents him in such an unflattering light — quite literally so, shooting its cast such that their skin looks like raw chicken and every wrinkle casts a shadow — that you’d think his agent would have advised him against it. (George Clooney’s probably did.) That’s what’s so courageous about Jackman’s decision, and one of several reasons that “Bad Education” is the best work he’s ever done.

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Here’s a star at the height of his powers leveraging his own appeal to remind that even our heroes are fallible and that you can never really judge someone from the outside. And Finley — whose only prior feature credit is the ice-cold, Patricia Highsmith-worthy high-wire act “Thoroughbreds” — is every bit the director to bring it home, pairing Jackman with an equally astonishing Allison Janney as school business administrator Pam Gluckin, Tassone’s creative-accounting accomplice. Finley, who clearly thrives when dramatizing morally complicated situations, doesn’t do the first thing you’d expect from any telling of this national-headline-making story (one that was first exposed by the school paper, the Hilltop Beacon): He doesn’t sensationalize it. Not that it would have been wrong to do so.

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It worked for Martin Scorsese in “The Wolf of Wall Street.” It worked for Steven Soderbergh in “The Informant.” Splash it up — that’s the obvious answer. Make the colors pop, the movie’s carotid artery bulge. That’s how such material is usually played. Look at this story on paper — a high school student exposes an $11 million embezzlement scheme perpetrated by the institution’s most admired figure — and you might expect a tongue-in-cheek cross between “Election” and “To Die For” (the Gus Van Sant-directed satire inspired by Pamela Smart, a high school employee locked up after enlisting her teenage lover to murder her hubby).

Written by Mike Makowsky (“I Think We’re Alone Now”), who was attending Roslyn Middle School when the Tassone scandal broke, “Bad Education” doesn’t shy away from the humor of the situation, but it doesn’t go for the cheap laughs either (unless you count some of the distractingly tacky decorating choices in Gluckin’s ready-for-remodeling home). With their strong accents and “Sopranos”-like way of dressing, the movie’s all-too-trusting Long Island residents would’ve been an easy target for parody, but that’s not the tone Finley’s going for. From the high-contrast, stark-widescreen look of things, he’s most interested in the way that people like Tassone and Gluckin could rationalize what they were doing.

That’s easy: Of all the careers in America, educators are by far the most undercompensated. In New York, where the cost of living is high and the real estate outrageous (the latter ironically exacerbated by the quality of the public schools), how are teachers supposed to afford being part of the community they serve? That doesn’t justify graft, mind you, but it suggests how people who’ve dedicated their lives to a low-earning field might find themselves bent toward skimming a little something extra for themselves out of the school budget.

“Bad Education” makes a point of showing how much Tassone meant to the community. Early on (the year is 2002, as signified by flip phones, compact discs and other period details), Tassone is seen tweezing his nose hairs before going onstage to take credit for turning the school into a success. Roslyn is ranked No. 4 in the country. Test scores are up. Seniors are getting into Ivy League schools in record numbers. And Roslyn is set to break ground on a $7.5 million “sky walk” that could give the community a massive boost.

Rachel, a sophomore played by “Blockers” standout Geraldine Viswanathan , has just joined the school paper, whose editor isn’t prepared for the deep dive into the school’s financial records that she has in mind. “We are an extracurricular designed to get us into good colleges,” he says. But Rachel (a fictional character based on an actual student journalist) has something to prove — to herself; to her father (Harid Hillon), who was canned in an insider-trading scandal; and to Tassone, who truly cares about the students, encouraging her to turn the puff-piece assignment into something meaningful.

At times, the story borders on the incredible, and it may spoil the surprise to read some of the details that follow. Through an imbecilic mistake — in which Gluckin’s son charges thousands of dollars of home renovation supplies to the school account — the school board gets wind of Gluckin’s financial misdeeds. When it happens, audiences don’t know whether or to what degree Tassone is involved, and it’s fascinating to watch Jackman in action: Like a master politician (or a brilliant actor), he sizes up the situation, assesses his audience and begins to spin things to best protect all involved. In other movies, scenes like these are played such that viewers can see the con man’s hand, but Jackman keeps a poker face, which protects the remaining surprises until such time that Rachel can reveal them.

True-crime movies so often serve to reinforce the notion that wrongdoers are eventually brought to justice in this country. But “Bad Education” refuses to get so reductively didactic. Yes, Tassone and Gluckin stole millions of dollars, but they also made Roslyn an extremely successful school (if you don’t dwell on the leaky ceilings and outdated equipment). When certain details of Tassone’s private life come to light — including a reunion with a former student (Rafael Casal of “Blindspotting”) and an unconventional arrangement with one of the school’s mysterious suppliers (Stephen Spinella) — one may be tempted to judge. But the real takeaway is how hard that can be.

Maybe Spacey isn’t the only one who can handle the ambiguity such a performance demands. The way Jackman plays it, Tassone was a villain who didn’t see himself as such. Finley finds creative ways to suggest the discrepancy between inner and outer selves. The hair-slicked, health-conscious superintendent is constantly watching his cholesterol, forgoing carbs in favor of charcoal smoothies — which amounts to nourishing his insides with what looks like black bile. Late in the game, before the jig is up, he goes in for a face-lift — another reminder of the mask Tassone wears (and an unexpected sight for a now-50-year-old movie star). Appearances can be deceiving. This we know. But how do young people cope with having their images of their heroes shattered? And is it really any easier for adults? “Bad Education” can be a hard lesson to accept, but a necessary one in how the world works.

Reviewed at Toronto Film Festival (Special Presentations), Sept. 8, 2019. Running time: 108 MIN.

• Production: An HBO release of an Automatik, Sight Unseen, Slater Hall production. (Int'l sales: Endeavor Content, Los Angeles.) Producers: Fred Berger, Eddie Vaisman, Julia Lebedev, Brian Kavanaugh-Jones, Oren Moverman, Mike Makowsky. Executive producers: Leonid Lebedev, Caroline Jaczko.
• Crew: Director: Cory Finley. Screenplay: Mike Makowsky, based on the New York Magazine article "Bad Superintendent" by Robert Kolker. Camera (color, widescreen): Lyle Vincent. Editor: Louise Ford. Music: Michael Abels.
• With: Hugh Jackman, Allison Janney, Ray Romano, Geraldine Viswanathan

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