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Episode Recap A Very Peculiar Practice on TV.com. Watch A Very Peculiar Practice episodes, get episode information, recaps and more.

• A Very Peculiar Practice

Firstly, this series is not to everyone's taste. I also wouldn't be at all surprised if it didn't travel too well. Secondly, it is a 'high comedy', no laughter track, 60 minutes (without adverts) episodes, deliberately slow plot, complex dialogue scenes. However, now the first series is available on DVD, many can now found out what an absolutely fantastic series this was.

It is based on a 'new' English University Campus, the type built in the 1950's and 60's which display concrete cancer out of every nook and cranny. It has a medical practice to serve students and staff, and every one is slightly mad and eccentric except for the star, Stephen 'Touch Taboo' Daker, his open relationship partner Lyn Turtle, and his roommate (Chen). Do you like 'The Office'? Well, it is often cited that the prototype for David Brent was Basic Fawlty; but just watch this, and you will know it is Dr Bob Buzzard, what a fantastic creation! Why is it good? The acting, the scripts and the direction (even the set design) is fantastic; multiple viewings will be rewarded. Be prepared for a black-edged, intelligent, highly satirical look at University life, complete with a couple of nuns.

Andrew (let's do another adaptation) Davies has never really topped this. I don't think they dare to make slow moving, intelligent, character-based comedy dramas anymore - this is a big pity. I am curious to know how other people view this, I wouldn't be surprised if there were many who didn't like it.

But if you watch this, because of this, or other reviews, and you like it, you will be forever grateful! A Very Peculiar Practice is another example of the intelligent and thought-provoking television which the BBC went through a phase of producing during the mid to late-1980s. Along with the likes of Edge of Darkness and the Singing Detective this is a series which demands the attention of the viewer. Andrew Davies has a proved track record in writing for television and this series is no exception. Peter Davison made the successful leap from being the confident, self-assured and cheeky Doctor Who for 3 years to being the clumsy and nervous but capable Stephen Daker. Graham Crowden's performances as Jock McCannon are seemingly bizarre but do keep with the series' title.

Barbara Flynn is the slightly enigmatic Rose-Marie but David Troughton steals the show as Bob Buzzard, a typical example of the many right of centre profit-seekers who populated Thatcher's Britain at the time. The series has aged somewhat but its dark humour and memorable theme music give it a great degree of uniqueness and those who don't mind being challenged while watching television could do a lot worse than adding this gem of a comedy-drama to your DVD collection. Let's face it, almost everyone who writes on IMDb likes to claim such-and-such is the best movie/TV series/mini-series etc. Well this is my pick. I can only assume that not many people have seen this because there are some fairly mediocre programmes getting the nod.

This show was a dark black comedy with exquisite scripts and terrific acting. It's the best British show I've seen (Upstairs Downstairs is close and I accept The Singing Detective may be better than I found it).

If you get to see reruns of this - make the effort. You'll never regret it or forget it. Update: the first series is now available on DVD, which is great news. It's truly a programme to treasure. How many others do we buy that we never return to? This is such a literate and witty show that it's worth keeping. The only thing is, Series 2 was probably the best and it's not yet available.

Judging by the small number of comments, AVPP was only shown once outside of the UK. Like most great television, it was probably too way out for most viewers at the time.

Initially I was drawn to it by the presence of Peter Davison and the lovely Barbara Flynn. Other reviewers have explained the story and refreshed my memory.

A superlative cast and remarkable script, touches of 'The Twilight Zone' and 'The Outer Limits', a memorable theme and soundtrack - and those two nuns. The sequel in the form of a TV-movie, 'A Very Polish Practice', may have put a lot of people off the original series, which is a pity. If you ever get the chance, watch the original series from start to finish. The early morning light struggles to penetrate the dark, litter-strewn walkways of the University Campus - no trees here, just concrete, tarmac, and murky glass windows that only reflect grime and misery. Not the most obvious setting for a comedy, but it's fitting that the dark, forbidding structures of Lowlands University match the richly dark humour of A Very Peculiar Practice. We see the Medical Practice, with it's share of social outcasts (dour, drunken Scot Jock McCannon, self-centred, self-obsessed Bob Buzzard, and scheming, feminist man (and woman) trap, Dr Rose Marie). We see the University Chancellor, the inappropriately named Ernest Hemingway.

We see the students, scared, drunk, clever, confused, horny - all finding their own way. And into all this, we see cast the misplaced and well-intentioned Dr Steven Daker, who is wonderfully played by Peter Davison. Daker is so out of his depth to start with, but slowly he managed to learn the way of survival, then life, then enjoyment, as he learns from his colleagues, his friends, and the lovely Lyn Turtle. As has been said before, this is a story about life - as we all have to live it. It's superbly written, excellently played, and delightfully spiced. Come on, BBC - release Series 2 on DVD!!! I saw this series on TV when it first came out and have very fond memories of it.

Just recently I wanted to buy it on DVD, but find that it is no longer available. I contacted 2 Entertain, who now hold the rights and they advised me: 'I am sorry to have to disappoint you but upon investigation I can confirm that we have no immediate plans to clear and release this title on DVD. Your correspondence will be kept on file as each quarter we review public inquiries and often revisit titles which are frequently requested.' I would therefore encourage everyone who would like to obtain this series (and hopefully the second series as well as the first) to contact 2 Entertain (DVDenquiryline@2entertain.co.uk) and let them know that there is indeed a market out there. I urge people to do this because both series one and two were hilarious, with each episode approaching the events in the practice from a different slant and the main characters being very humorously drawn.

As well as the naive young doctor at the centre of the practice, there is the old scallywag, who, though an alcoholic, practices surprisingly good medicine at times and the ambitious and greedy young company man on the make. Thoroughly recommended. Just saw a repeat of one episode on satellite channel Performance and what a good one it turned out to be, pure luck finding it on at all. All I could remember after all the years were star Peter Davison and of course the two mad nuns, a quirky running joke you looked out for (like a Hitchcock appearances in his films) when these were first broadcast originally. This had Timothy West as a literally manic professor consulting the campus Dr (Davison's character)and raging at him on a drunken rampage round the University while popping pills Dr Daker keeps saying should not be mixed with alcohol.

It is a typically bravura performance worth an award I felt and shamefully lost in TV's vaults, what an example of top-notch acting, does anyone agree with me I wonder? A companion piece to his Brass efforts in my opinion. This or both series should be run again on a main channel to be seen by more people for all its plusses already cited here. And to see Troughton and Crowden at their very best which is very very good as is the terrific original writing of the great Andrew Davies. I treated my husband to the DVDs of A Very Peculiar Practice Series 1 for Christmas, and it cheered us up enormously. Instead of watching the usual bilge dished up on British TV, we wallowed in Andrew Davies' witty scripts and the excellent acting of all involved. I can hardly think of a more perfectly cast show - Bob Buzzard is a truly stunning invention, played to perfection by David Troughton.

And I doubt if Graham Crowden was ever better. Add to the mix the fragrant Barbara Flynn and you have perfection. The little boy lost look of Peter Davison is affecting, and Amanda Hillwood provides a very decorative foil (even if her accent is hard to pin down - I spent the first episode assuming she was Australian!). We were amazed how well it stood the test of time - my husband is a university lecturer and says things have hardly changed at all, just got worse.

To anyone who has never seen this excellent series, give yourself a real treat. You won't regret it. I'd never heard of this program, it was only luck that I found out about it recently. The link is 'Drop the Dead Donkey'. Haydn Gwynne made a brief speaking appearance in the first series with Trevor Cooper whilst David Troughton (Roy Merchant Jnr) and they're not the only ones. For a comedy the program isn't all that funny.

There are a few laugh-out-loud moments, most coming delivered by the excellent Graham Crowden. The theme music is terrible. Some of the bit-parts are interesting.

In the first series, 1986, Kathy Burke makes a very brief appearance and Hugh Grant appears as a preacher. One character goes to see a doctor and explains that he owes the BBC £17k for reasons 'I can't quite understand'. This was closely based on Andrew Davies' own experiences. The same character went in to Dr Daker as he'd had his foot run over in the car park by a nun. The nuns were a strange addition to the program, appearing in every episode (I believe!).

The casting is quite good, the main characters having been well chosen and the script is of a very good standard. The program is extremely watchable. I have lost several hours watching one episode after another.

This is a series I long to see again, just because there was so much to it in the comedy/commentary on the darkest side of economics, education and the greed that underlies the funding for our schools and social programs, whether in England or America. It focuses on Dr. Daker and his work at the medical clinic for the students at a small English college. The staffing and funding for various student support services become a battleground as various corporate sponsors begin to alter school policies. Stephen Daker was also a great role for Peter Davison, showing him to be capable of much more than the troubled Tristan Farnon or the fifth Doctor, one that I liked but many wouldn't give a break because he followed Tom Baker's masterful Doctor.

Graham Crowden was also initially in the series, and as always, the right choice in the role. I seem to recall at least three seasons of 'A Very Peculiar Practice' set in England, and watched on our local American PBS station.

A Very Peculiar Practice

I know there was talk of the Polish setting, but I have never seen any of that spin-off season. The lack of information available on this series seems to continue the theme of the stories, suppressing those that question authority, with the powers-that-be only interested in supporting those that toe the line and do what they are told without ethical or moral considerations, giving their all for the highest dollar. It is wonderful to know that one season is finally available on DVD. I will be looking for the whole series!

It opens with two nuns rummaging around in a skip and describes the shenanigans taking place in a modern British university (reputed to be Keele) in the 1980s. The characters in the student health service are all neurotic. There's Old Jock, a burnt out Scot who diagnoses a young student as 'missing her mother'. In fact she has appendicitis and almost dies. Another is a horny lesbian, who despises the career go-getter in the practice.

Our hero, the main character (played by Peter Davidson, who later went on to play Dr. Who and now is The Last Detective) is the newest arrival and spends much of his time trying to figure out just what he has got himself into. This is a gentle and unique comedy and subtle satire on the decay of the university system under Margaret Thatcher. I am now the proud owner of DVDs of the two series. It was one of those programmes that had humour (no laughter track, thank the Lord) sprinkled among the satire. I had a massive crush on Barbara Flynn whose character has no surname. 'Just Rose Marie.

That's my full name. I'm not exactly into patronymics, Stephen. Going through the whole of one's life labelled as one man's daughter,another man's wife.' She delivered the line so beautifully. She is no defenceless little delicate flower.

David Troughton is the obnoxious Thatcherite Bob Buzzard just played perfectly without quite going over the top, who gets his comeuppance from his wife and a gay athlete (hilarious when his straightness was threatened). Graham Crowden is the alcoholic and swivel-eyed 'auld Jock' who holds the peculiar practice together by letting Buzzard and Rose Marie jockey for position, and their shenanigans ensure they stay where they are. Peter Davidson was excellent in this.

He starts off as the emotional wreck in a bad marriage (he was beaten up by his wife), nervous and frightened of his own shadow. His emotional life takes a turn for the better and his voice is no longer nervy or high pitched. When he addresses the new intake he gets the delivery of a terrified and reluctant speech giver spot on. This is among the best British TV had to offer in those days. Intelligent drama, leavened with humour that often did not require more than a wry smile.

Even though I am watching this alone, I can recall the joy my late partner and I both had at the time and I've laughed out loud a few times. In episode four, watch out for the final scene in the university bar and notice the various side effects of the drug in action. It's nicely understated. It became darker in the second series, but it was none the worse for that. Probably that's why it was so enjoyable.

The move from the light to the dark. Who would have thought?

A drama (with a touch of humor) set in a medical clinic at a university that draws you in, and then some. I'm a big fan of A Very Peculiar Practice and it's more than the working lives of the medical staff at the university clinic. The episode explores the corporatization of universities, and it seems Andrew Davies was right on the mark in foreseeing this. Margaret Thatcher was elected back in 1979, so Andrew had his finger on the pulse for sure.

Peter Davison is a mainstay in a string of quality UK TV series, and one of my favorites was The Last Detective, which is an underrated detective series that deserves more recognition. Andrew Davies' 'A Very Peculiar Practice', a drama about a medical centre in a fictional modern university, named 'Lowlands', certainly shows its age: it feels like a low budget production, the soundtrack (and the haircuts) are very much of its era, and some of the dialogue is clunky - the students in particular seem poorly realised and acted (even though played quite a few subsequently famous names). Davies' obsession with nuns as a point of interest also seems somewhat strange. But the series is held together by some fine portrayals, and excellent comic writing, around the four central characters: Peter Davison's haplessly shy and reserved young doctor, Barbara Flynn's manipulative feminist, Graham Cawdon's hoary old drunk, and David Troughton's repressed Thatcherite Bob Buzzard. On the commentary of the DVD, Davies notes how in the original script, a hippie doctor occupied the place of Buzzard, and in hindsight, the change was perhaps crucial to making the series a success. For it's Buzzard who most clearly places the story in 1980s Britain, and connects the doctors to the wider issues concerning the university as a whole. In fact, in his depiction of university funding, and the increasing need for universities to act with a perpetual eye on the bottom line, Davies (who spent time teaching at a university himself) not only gets the politics spot on, but actually makes a wider (and often unappreciated) point about the changes made to Britain under Thatcher.

Public organisations were required to act with self-interest: one can call it efficiency, or the disastrous loss of the lofty ethos of public service, but it's striking and universal: today, many of the reforms proposed by the mad vice-chancellors at Lowlands University would seem routine to anyone who works in the university sector. In this sense, the drama is not so much dated, but astonishingly prescient. The first series (of two) is the best - there are episodes that work as almost perfect sitcom, albeit of a very sly sort (and mercifully without laughter tracks). Series two isn't quite so good: the same themes seem to run through most of the episodes (and eventually start to wear a little thin), and the new vice chancellor's sinister motives seem less believable than the straightforward combination of greed, need, vanity and stupidity that drove his predecessor in series one. But overall, the series is a lost gem of 1980s television (although its DVD release may change that): funny, clever, and yet political.

It's a shame that Davies turned to writing lucrative costume dramas and these days rarely addresses life in contemporary Britain - on this basis, he was good at it. October 10, 2011. Put it in your diaries.

Series 1 (1986) with John Bird as the Vice Chancellor. Series 2 (1988) with Michael Shannon as the American Vice Chancellor. Polish Practice (1992) in Warsaw with Joanna Kanska.

Both series plus the Polish Practice will be released in a 5 DVD set. It will be good to have a proper copy. It is on my wish list already. Unlike some other reviews, I found the Polish Practice to be the equal of the others, even though the context had changed, but wasn't one of the main threads running through the whole thing about change? Resisting change, coping with change, getting on in a new environment?

If it had always remained the same environment, then it would have turned into a soap. I'm glad it didn't. Today, Graham Crowden died: a lovely and funny man. How very refreshing to stumble across these reviews while googling the obits.

So many enthusiastic reviews of another lost BBC classic in which he was outstanding (like Troughton and so many others in this well balanced comedy). I have followed the earlier advice and emailed the franchise holding company asking them to release series 2 (though I did refer to current BBC managment as 'cnuts'so may have upset them).

The quality of the cast in this production is staggering. The script of anything on offer today simply cannot compete.

If you liked Schulz, Withnail or Potter, watch this. I can't wait to see it again. Enjoy, Stephen.

While this thread is about, anyone remember any other university based dramas from the 80's? I think The History Man was repeated fairly recently and there was also Nice Work with Hayden Gwynne and Warren Clarke.

I enjoyed both! Oh, what wouldn't I give to see Nice Work again?! It was so beautifully done, really moving and in places very funny at the same time. Warren Clarke was brilliant. I agree, it would be fantastic to see a season of repeats of this sort of intelligent, of-its-time drama from the 80s. Speaking of 'of-its-time' 80s drama, does anyone remember a series called 'Campaign', about an ad agency? It was a bit hammy and cheesy in places but it really captured that Thatcher years greed and glamour flavour.

I'd love to see that again too. Just thought I'd resurrect this old thread to see if anyone's been watching the series 2 repeats that are being shown on Sky Arts on Sundays? I haven't seen this series for years and it's just as much fun as I remember! I'm so jealous.I only have Freeview so I'm missing this treat.

Wonder if there's any chance of the new Freeview Channel 'Dave' showing it sometime? That (Dave) seems to be mainly BBC shows, so maybe there's a chance it might pop up there. I'd.love. to see the second series again.it was just perfect TV. I've registered with Sky Player (I don't have Sky), and according to the website you can still download stuff on a pay-per-view basis if you don't have Sky TV.but I can't find AVPPS2 listed in the programmes available to download. What should I do?

Are only selected programmes available on Sky Player? Or will it become available after it's been shown on TV (9.00 tonight)? I'm totally new to this Sky mallarkey (backward? Moi?) and I haven't a clue what I'm doing. Any advice.very. gratefully received.I am absolutely DESPERATE to see this much-loved show!