Dated, but I liked it better than the book

There is a problem with the timing- the original book was published in 1974 and was set in the 1960's. Most of the Fellows, except for the Bursar, had been there since before the war and were fit for retirement but didn't want to go anywhere. Zipser was the type of research graduate who may have thrived at a "new" university, such as Sussex or Essex, but was attracted by the prestige of Cambridge. However, Porterhouse, being so old fashioned and "Hooray Henry" focussed, was unsure what to do with him. So they treated him like a boy in a public (top-rank private) school, which is what the undergraduates were used to.
In the book, Godber Evans was a Wilsonite (proto New Labour) with an intensely liberal wife (who however had her own prejudices in line with her politics).

As well as taking the proverbial out of the intense blind conservatism of the Fellows of Porterhouse, the book also has far more fun with the left, such as the "Anti-Conception League" and PC emerging even in a staid conservative city such as Cambridge. However, the rest of Cambridge still rests in a "is there honey still for tea" unworldly fog of nostalgia, symbolised by Skullion who had been there since the 1920's, no matter what is going on outside at the time (Vietnam, 1968, hippies, etc.)

In the TV film, made in 1986, some changes were made to accommodate the inevitable changes in the landscape. For example, the Bursar was changed into an ardent Thatcherite, a "supply siding monetarist", happy to toast business but with little real knowledge of its machinations. Godber Evans became a wet Tory (Heath rather than Thatcher), which would have made it much less likely for him to have a stridently left-wing wife.

This conversion was rather poorly done in some ways and there were a huge number of anachronisms which while amusing in the 1960's would have been near impossible twenty years later. The other Fellows were marooned in the 1930's, 40's and 50's rather than the 1920's as in the book, and were therefore bizarrely old-fashioned in manner and ideology for their chronological ages. Skullion claimed to have been there for 45 years, longer than any of the Fellows, yet the Senior Tutor claimed to have been a Fellow since 1939. The idea of condom machines in the University scandalises most of the Fellows- even Sir Godber thinks it would be better for King's College (in the book, described as a den of supposed homosexual iniquity). £500,000 is enough to buy an entire street in Cambridge, repair the Tower and build a new college annex to be named after Lady Mary(!) This £500,000 in shares was given to Skullion before the war- despite the fact Skullion started, acccording to the TV series, in 1941. Carrington's TV show is amazingly old-fashioned for the 1980's- more a mid 60's show than a mid 80's show in presentation, etc. Carrington was a student in the 1970's in the TV series, to match Griff Rhys Jones' actual age- in the book, he was an aristocrat who had been there in the 1930's and was among the first generation of TV producers.

Basically, the book shows the problems Porterhouse (and by extension, the real Oxbridge colleges) had with adapting to the postwar world as symbolised by the confused Zipser and the ineffectual reformer Godber Evans. The TV series has to move this forward to the 1980's, but there are a number of anachronisms which were imaginable in the 1960's but which would have been near impossible in more modern times.