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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.

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. Frank

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.

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!

I have just found series one on DVD and watched it back to back for the first time since 1986, listed here as a comedy drama, no sure I could say a comedy, more of a black comedy, a laughter track would have killed it.

What a cast Peter Davidson still in ACGAS as the confused Mr Daker, the sultry, sexy Barbara Flyn as the bi-sexual manipulating Rose (no surname) Marie, David (my dad was Dr Who) Troughton fabulous as Dr Bob (call me Robert) Buzzard. The late, great Graham Crowden as Jock the alcoholic and the wonderful John Bird as Ernest Hemingway the Vice Chancellor. Also I must mention the lovely Amanda Hillwood as Dr Daker's love interest, a loss to the acting world when she met and married Matt Frewer AKA Max Headroom, her full frontal scene was........... well you know.

Plus there are some early appearances by Timothy West, Hayden Gwynn, Liz Crowther, Kathy (pre Waynetta Slob) Burke and a very young Huge (sic) Grant. Music by my old mate, Colosseum's Dave Greenslade, with Elkie Brooks on vocals.

It's off the wall and defiantly very, very strange, especially the two nuns who never speak but can be seen rifling through the bins amongst other things.

It can still be found on DVD, I doubt it will ever be repeated on TV unless someone like Talking Pictures pick it up, they have been pretty good at finding stuff like this. However you do it, WATCH IT!

This was a great series, catch it if you can. Although superficially about a rather strange medical practice & its staff, it's actually a thinly veiled critique of academic life and politics in a small provincial English university. A BBC classic.

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.

I watched this as a teenager and loved every minute of it.

It's clever, funny and I've never forgotten it. Every character is beautifully constructed - presumably drawn from Andrew Davies' own experience. To this day when I see Peter Davison I think of Doctor Daker, not Doctor Who.

This was the BBC at its best.

I tried to watch this series straight through but the first season was a chore. Characters were taken to comedic extremes to where you think they are "doing a turn" and there is some comedic scenes from that. Peter Davison's Stephen Decker makes me think of Sam Lowry in Brazil, a sane man in an insane world. The first series was mostly subtle trying to bring this across, then the second season was like a sledgehammer.

Second season is when extreme Lindsay Anderson levels of surrealism start creeping in far beyond just the two nuns acting like reprobates. They added ridiculous American characters ( I hope Davies doesn't think we are all like that. Its no living Americans fault FDR did absolutely nothing to stop the Nazis for over two years after the blitz started. Though those today who idolize FDR definitely deserve to be ridiculed on this level.) to head the university. The campus becomes a gigantic metaphor for nearly every liberal cliché interpretation of 1980s Western civilization. Greed, Machiavellian jingoism and on and on. I imagine if the series were made in the early 80s during the peak of nuclear war paranoia, they'd either have a bomb go off or a reactor meltdown on campus. American universities are in the other idealogical extreme these days and students are ironically as unprepared to face life when they graduate as the students in the last episode (except they also owe over a quarter of a million in federal student loans if they were dumb enough to live on campus and try grad school after) of this series, hence the mental health crisis. It gets funnier with how hamfisted the messaging gets.

Recommended series for the comedy. It borrows A LOT (some might say too much) from Lindsay Anderson. There are plenty of 'did I just see that?' moments. Having Graham Crowdon in it was inspired casting. Both he and Barbara Flynn had roles in Britannia Hospitial. Can't be a coincidence.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090541/

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.

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.

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. Dr. 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. 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!

A young idealistic socially awkward doctor Stephen Daker takes a job in the health centre serving Lowlands university.

A Very Peculiar Practice is a truly subversive and hysterically funny satire of Thatcher's Britain of the 1980s.

From his first sight of two nuns rummaging in garbage bins upon his arrival, poor Dr Daker finds himself entering The Twilight Zone.

Written by Andrew Davies, the characters are truly memorable from David Troughton's manic Dr Bob Buzzard, and Jock, the alcoholic boss of the practice who dictates his cynical memoirs "The Sick University" throughout. It's a black comedy par excellence. See it, and enjoy the 1980s for all it's miserable charm.

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. At last.

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.

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!!!

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.

One of the very best of 1980s TV. Spot on scripts satirising Thatcher's Britain. Excellent cast too: Peter Davidson & Barbara Flynn of course, but also a young Hugh Grant making an appearance in #1.2 as a Scottish lay-preacher.

In the UK, Series 1 was shown on BBC4 recently (at close to midnight) as part of an Andrew Davies season. Hopefully we'll get series 2 again as well at some point.

It is many years now since I saw this series, but I vividly and fondly remember David Troughton's performance as Bob Buzzard. Staggeringly selfish and self centred, he dominated the series. I loved him. One would expect no less from David Troughton, of course. Bob is up there with the other great TV monsters, Alan Partridge and David Brent.

It is bizarre that the series has never been repeated, nor, so far as I know, released on video. Any explanations?

Two successful series and a one-off "return" in 1992.This intriguing comedy based at a fictional university, satirically attacks changes to Britain, and in particular the entrenched establishments of the time,and the faceless,self-serving individuals that gained from their destructive demise.The university is plainly a metaphor of the country at that time,and the skillful script and expertise of the superb cast illustrate the changes then, as darker forces take over control of the university whilst the various departments and individuals fight for their own ends;like Bob Buzzard's refusal to accept that he may not graduate to a 'series 5 BMW',from his existing 'series 3',let alone his dream of a 'series 7',and all of this taking precedence over the fact that his wife and kids have left him, and his house is starting to fall apart all around him.Barbara Flynn's portrayal of Rose-Marie is one of the sexiest memories I have of that time.Strangely enough,although I seem to remember an obscure screening on a cable channel about ten years ago,the show,as best as I can tell,was never re-shown on UK television and was never released on video.Perhaps some nerves were touched in places that do not like to be touched?

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.

This is the best comedy I've ever seen. Written, perhaps as a serie a clef, by ex-academic Andrew Davies, who went on to adapt Middlemarch, Pride and Prejudice etc for the BBC, it is also the best comedy ever set in the health centre of a provincial British university.