A Very Peculiar Practice: Series 2, Part 4

Series 2 of the cult comedy-drama, set in the health centre of a modern British university.

Cast
Dr Stephen Daker: Peter Davison
Dr Jock McCannon: Graham Crowden
Dr Bob Buzzard: David Troughton
Dr Rose Marie: Barbara Flynn
Lyn Turtle: Amanda Hillwood
Maureen Gahagan: Lindy Whiteford
Ernest Hemmingway: John Bird
Takashi Kawahara: Chen Sung Yau
Nun: Elaine Turrell
Nun: Sonia Hart
Grete Grotowska: Joanna Kanska
Jack Daniels: Michael J Shannon
Julie Daniels: Toria Fuller
Prof George Bunn: James Grout
Charlie Dusenberry: Colin Stinton

Crew
Writer: Andrew Davies
Producer: Ken Riddington
Director: David Tucker
Music: Dave Greenslade
Theme: sung by Elkie Brooks

Part 4: Bad Vibrations
This cult satirical, surreal and acutely observed comedy-drama series was one of the highlights of British TV drama in the late-1980s, and Series 2 is now getting a timely re-airing on Sky Arts.

From the pen of Andrew Davies (whose move to big-budget period dramas such as Pride and Prejudice was a significant loss to contemporary TV drama), A Very Peculiar Practice is set in the Medical Centre of Lowlands University. The medical centre is modern and well equipped, but definitely not the place to fall sick. Lowlands - a campus university built with vision and hope in the 1960s - is now a bleak and increasingly shabby monument. The academic staff are becoming similarly jaded and are desperately hanging on to their jobs as government spending cuts bite into the centres of higher education. The whole place is at a low ebb, but the Medical Centre is the University's worst feature. It is probably the worst medical practice in the British Isles.

Enter new, idealistic doctor Stephen Daker (Peter Davison) who rapidly discovers his colleagues are an alcoholic radical, an unprincipled feminist, and a failing entrepreneur. In the midst of a slowly maturing relationship with research student and policewoman Lyn, Daker has to cope with students' emotional traumas, an academic on the verge of a breakdown, an outbreak of a sexually transmitted disease and the restructuring forced on the university by financial cuts.