A Very Peculiar Practice

A Very Peculiar Practice is a BBC comedy-drama series, which ran for two series in 1986 and
1988. The series was a surreal black comedy, set in the health centre of a British university. The
two series were followed by a 90-minute made-for-television film following some of the
characters to a new setting in Poland.
It was written by Andrew Davies, and was inspired by his experiences as a lecturer at
the University of Warwick.
In 2010, The Guardian ranked the serial at number 5 in their list of "The Top 50 TV Dramas of
All Time".[1]

Storyline[edit]
The series is a black comedy with surreal elements. It concerned an idealistic young doctor,
Stephen Daker (Peter Davison), taking up a post as a member of a university medical centre. The
centre is staffed by a group of misfits including the bisexual Rose Marie (Barbara Flynn), selfabsorbed Bob Buzzard (David Troughton), and decrepit Scot, Jock McCannon (Graham
Crowden) who heads the team in the first series. One of the themes of the series is the increasing
commercialisation of higher education in Britain following the government cuts of the early
1980s, with the Vice-Chancellor Ernest Hemmingway (John Bird) trying to woo Japanese
investors in the face of resistance from the academic old guard. Hugh Grant made one of his first
television appearances as an evangelical preacher; Kathy Burke also had a bit part. In the second
series an American Vice-Chancellor Jack Daniels (Michael J. Shannon) took over from
Hemingway, continuing the running joke of naming the VC after a famous American (although
the whiskey distiller's name was Jack Daniel).
In the first series, Daker had a romance with a post-graduate policewoman, Lyn Turtle (Amanda
Hillwood), who rescued him from drowning in the university's swimming pool. In the second
series broadcast in 1988, Daker is now head of the centre and has a new love interest
in Polish academic Grete Grotowska (Joanna Kanska). Rose Marie is romantically interested in
both Grotowska and Daniels, but only has an affair with the latter,
In the sequel television film, A Very Polish Practice (1992), the couple are now living in Poland,
where he struggles with the former Communist country's antiquated health service. Grete
encounters an ex lover (Tadeusz Melnik played by Alfred Molina), who facilitated her getting
out of Poland and to whom she had promised herself, should she ever return and should he ever
ask. She battles to decide whether to stay with Stephen and their child or to go with Melnik (with
or without the child), confessing that she still loves him as well as Stephen.

Production[edit]
Lowlands University (the fictional institution at which the series was set) was based on
the University of East Anglia campus near Norwich. The BBC wanted to feature the UEA
campus in the programme's credits but the University refused permission. The locations for the
series' pre-filmed sequences were the universities of Keele and Birmingham.[2] Also used for
exterior filming was the BT engineer training school in Staffordshire. The selection of UEA by
the producers was not unintentional as it was the base for Malcolm Bradbury, to whose
development of the British campus novel the series is much indebted. Most of the interiors were
shot at BBC Pebble Mill (first series) and in London (second), in the then common combined
film/video format.
The series had its genesis in writer Andrew Davies discovering that he owed the BBC
approximately 17,000. This was due to him being commissioned and paid to write a TV project
that he did not deliver. Davies decided that the best means of paying the debt was to write a new
series, which became A Very Peculiar Practice. In a deliberate case of art imitating life, the final
episode of the first series introduces a character named Ron Rust (Joe Melia), a writer who - for
reasons that he doesn't quite understand - owes the BBC 17,000, so is trying to write a black
comedy about a university in order to pay the debt off. The Ron Rust character also appeared in
Davies's A Few Short Journeys of the Heart (an adaptation of his short story collection Dirty
Faxes), first shown in the Stages series on BBC2 on 10 August 1994.
The theme tune, "We Love You" was written by Dave Greenslade and performed by UK
singer, Elkie Brooks.[3]
The first series was released on DVD (Region 2) in the UK in 2004. A DVD set of the first and
second series, along with A Very Polish Practice, was released in the UK during October 2011.
Davies novelised both series in two books: A Very Peculiar Practice (1986, Coronet) and A Very
Peculiar Practice: The New Frontier (1988, Methuen).
Cast[edit]

Peter Davison as Dr. Stephen Daker

Graham Crowden as Dr. Jock McCannon

David Troughton as Dr. Robert "Bob" Buzzard

Barbara Flynn as Dr. Rose Marie

Amanda Hillwood as Lyn Turtle

Joanna Kanska as Grete Grotowska (2nd series)

Lindy Whiteford as Nurse Maureen Gahagan

John Bird as Vice-Chancellor Ernest Hemmingway (1st series)

Takashi Kawahara as Chen Sung Yau (1st series)

James Grout as Professor George Bunn (2nd series)

Michael J. Shannon as Vice-Chancellor Jack Daniels (2nd series)

Colin Stinton as Charlie Dusenberry (2nd series)

Gillian Raine as Mrs. Kramer

Joe Melia as Ron Rust

Kay Stonham as Daphne Buzzard

Elaine Turrell and Sonia Hart as Nuns