Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #42099 in DVD
• Released on: 2004-01-26
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Number of discs: 2
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 385 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
A satirical, surreal and acutely observed comedy-drama from the mid-1980s, A Very Peculiar Practice stars Peter Davison, who, following turns as a vet in All Creatures Great and Small and the Doctor in Doctor Who, here plays naïve Dr Stephen Daker, a profoundly nervous new addition to Lowlands University's medical practice. The distinctly eclectic team he meets is headed by the compassionate, incompetent, alcoholic and suicidal "Jock" McCannon (the gloriously theatrical Graham Crowden). Barbara Flynn is marvellous as the manipulative bisexual Dr Rose Marie, and David Troughton as Dr Bob Buzzard personifies the "greed-is-good" ethos of the era.

The seven 50-minute episodes here form an overall arc following Daker from sheer terror through romance with behavioural psychologist Lyn Turtle (Amanda Hillwood), to ethical conflict with the sociopathic vice-chancellor (played with relish by John Bird). Increasingly surreal (from strange nuns to stranger dream sequences--the second, even better series was more bizarre still), the series launches an acidic assault on the Thatcherite asset-stripping mentality that was then laying waste not just British universities, but the entire nation.

Written with an acute irony by Andrew Davies, whose move into more mainstream adaptations such as Pride and Prejudice (1995) was contemporary TV drama's greatest loss, A Very Peculiar Practice is a television landmark that, alongside The Singing Detective and Edge of Darkness, marks 1986 as one of the finest years in the history of the medium. --Gary S Dalkin

Special Features
English
Region 2
Commentaries
Archive Interviews

Synopsis
This special collector's set includes the entire first season of the popular and critically acclaimed BBC television series, A VERY PECULIAR PRACTICE. Written by Andrew Davies, the show was a black dramedy about Great Britain's National Health Service (NHS) and its internal dramas and politics.

Customer Reviews

This Series kept me going
I was a Junior House Officer in a busy District General Hospital when this series came out. It bowled me over.Here was a role model for the sort of Doctor I wanted to be. And yes, my life was just as bizarre and surreal as the Hero's. Anyone who has worked on the front line of the health service will recognise the weirdness. The only thing that has come close recently is Green Wing - PLEASE release Series 2 and make an older Doctor very happy!

For once, a comedy drama that's still as funny today
Since its first broadcast in 1986, this has always been one of the BBC dramas I have most affection for. So much so that, only a year after the launch of DVD machines, I was already writing letters to the Times complaining about the non-availability of 'A Very Peculiar Practice' on the new format. Now, three years later, we finally have Series One on DVD. (I have actually paid twice for this product -- my first order was with a Jersey-based firm who went bust before they sent me the thing, but that's another matter.)

Watching the whole thing again, but this time within the space of a week, there are two aspects that really strike me:

1. The brilliance of the lead actors -- i.e. the four doctors plus the vice-chancellor. I find it impossible to think of another actor who could have played those parts better. Peter Davison effectively replays his vet persona from the James Herriott series (rather than his Dr Who!), but it is such a winning character. He is a man to whom things happen, rather than a man who makes things move, although along the way he does stand up for what he believes in. Things always turn out OK in the end for Dr Dacre. (One suspects the writer Andrew Davies always wants the unpretentious characters to win through. In the final episode, the consultant who has all the insight and makes all the key recommendations is the clumsy wimp for whom everyone feels embarrassed.)

David Troughton (brother of Patrick Troughton, the second Dr Who) plays a fantastic Bob ... or 'Robert' to the few who respect him. He hates his job and can't stand touching patients. His mentor Jock seems to feel much the same way, always looking for a psychological explanation for the most physical of symptoms. Barbara Flynn has never surpassed her performance as Rose Marie, one of the first television bisexuals.

2. The other thing that hits me is the relevance of the university funding crisis to today. We may have thought things were tough back in the mid-80s, but the budgetary shortfalls are much worse today. John Bird vividly brings across the problems of the vice-chancellor in trying to attract funds, no matter how devious the means.

The only weakness in the cast, if there was one, was Lynn, Dr Dacre's love interest. She gets no funny lines, and it wasn't a complete surprise that, after an ambiguous end to the series which could have allowed her character to reappear, she was totally replaced in the second series.

The packaging is nothing special, and the extras ditto. It's a shame this wasn't released by the BBC -- instead it has been put out by NetworkVideo under license from the BBC. Occasionally one or two frames are missing, so the action slows down unaccountably for a split-second. The sound is unaffected by the visual glitches.

Though we may moan about the current absence from DVD of the second series -- which to my knowledge has only ever been shown once on terrestrial television -- the first series is wonderfully self-contained, and probably the better of the two series. Encourage everyone you know to buy this first instalment -- for goodness sake, don't lend it to anyone -- and that may encourage the powers at the Beeb to release the second series on DVD.

Please release the second series
Have had Season One on DVD for some time now - still wonderful, but this has left me wanting more...

Come on BBC, release the second series (and A Very Polish Practice) now!