magazine.]]
'' was a
BBC comedy-drama series, first shown in
1986 . It was the first major success for screenwriter
Andrew Davies , and was inspired by his experiences as a lecturer at the
University Of Warwick .
The series stood out because of its surreal humour. 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 ) and self-absorbed Bob Buzzard (
David Troughton ), and headed by decrepit Scot Jock McCannon (
Graham Crowden ). A central theme of the series is the increasing commercialisation of further education in Britain 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 in a bit part, as did
Kathy Burke . In the second series
Michael Shannon appeared as the new Vice-Chancellor Jack Daniels, continuing the running joke of naming the VC after an American.
In the first series, Daker had a romance with a policewoman, Lyn Turtle (
Amanda Hillwood ), who rescued him from drowning in the university's swimming pool. In the second series (1988), she was replaced as love interest by a visiting
Polish academic Greta Gretowska (
Joanna Kanska ). In a sequel film, (1992), Daker went to live with her in Poland, where he struggled with the
Communist system's antiquated health service.
The programme was based on the
University Of East Anglia campus in Norwich, and it was the UEA campus which featured in the programme's title sequence. However, all of the filming for the programme was done at the universities of
Keele and
Birmingham , several hundred miles (kilometres) away. This was put down to UEA's concern of being associated with a comedy programme, which might have cast the institution in a bad light. The selection of UEA by the producers was not unintentional as it was the base for
Malcolm Bradbury whose development of the British
Campus Novel the series is much indebted.
The first series was released on
DVD (Region 2) in the UK in
2004 . Davies
Novelised both series in two books: ''A Very Peculiar Practice'' (1986, Coronet) and ''A Very Peculiar Practice: The New Frontier'' (1988, Methuen).
