A Very Peculiar Practice Series 2

First broadcast 1988/ written by Andrew Davies/ starring Peter Davison, Graham Crowden, David Troughton, Barbara Flynn, Joanna Kanska, Michael J Shannon

After the first season ended on the slightly bizarre merger between the University and a police college it was hard to see what direction Andrew Davies was planning to go in. Thankfully he strips this unlikely arrangement out of the way immediately instead having the campus fall into the hands of ambitions Americans whose vice chancellor is named Jack Daniels. It’s as apposite a moniker as last season’s quintessential Englishman Ernest Hemingway. This time round the series is given an increased level of surreal happenings, often straying deeper into the dreams of either Jock or Stephen as they fathom the changes this new hierarchy brings. The Nuns prove to be as symbolic as the Tower of London’s ravens, while the students, so often absent during season one, have a greater presence and the series is the richer for it. There is also an increased level of farce as times which helps underpin the grimness elsewhere while relationships take on an altogether more intriguing dimension.

A Very Peculiar Practice Season One

Andrew Davies’ satire on business, academia and sexual politics still looks fresh 28 years on.

Quite often odd settings inspire good TV dramas and in the mid-1980s Andrew Davies created a series set in the Doctors’ surgery of a university, What at first seems an anomalous place for a drama proves to be a rich provider of stories surrounding both the personal and political travails of the place itself as well as Britain at the time. Though broadcast in 1986 the backdrop is more reminiscent of the earlier part of that decade with its economic cuts on the one hand and bold future plans on the other. Watching in 2014 there is more than a whiff of familiarity about all of this which shows that in some respects things have not changed that much in nearly thirty years.