fiction ==
The Open University has been featured in many films and television programmes. The plot of Educating Rita surrounds the working-class titular character aiming to "improve" herself by studying English literature. She attends private tutorials run by alcoholic lecturer Frank.
Television characters have also followed OU courses. These include Anne Bryce in the BBC sit-com Ever Decreasing Circles, Yvonne Sparrow in Goodnight Sweetheart, and George Bulman in Bulman, the ITV spin-off from the series Strangers. Sheila Grant (Sue Johnston) was accused of having an affair with her tutor in Brookside. Onslow, a character from Keeping up Appearances, watches Open University programming on television from time to time.
In autumn 2006, Lenny Henry was a star in Slings and Arrows, a one-off BBC television drama which he also wrote, about someone who falls in love while on an OU English Literature course. (Henry has himself completed an OU degree in English.)
In the 2006/07 TV series Life on Mars, Sam Tyler received messages from the real world via Open University programmes late at night.
Dorian Green from Birds of a Feather announced she had been accepted by the Open University to do a degree in psychology and began studying with the university in series 3.
In the 2014 Booker Prize long-listed novel The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell (author), the protagonist Holly Sykes is referenced studying psychology at the Open University.
In the 2016 novel Swing Time by Zadie Smith, the narrator's mother is a student at the Open University.
In the TV series Bottom, specifically the episode Accident, Eddie, Spudgun, and Dave Hedgehog watch TV while playing hide-and-seek with Ritchie. They fall asleep, leaving Ritchie in a cupboard until they finally awaken to an OU lecture on 'Medieval population distribution patterns in Lower Saxony'.
== Partnerships ==
=== Armed Forces ===
Through an agreement between the Ministry of Defence and the OU going back to the early 1970s, a wide range of courses is available to members of the British …
