A Very Peculiar Practice - The Complete BBC Series - [Network] - [DVD] [1986]

Lowlands University is a swamp of fear and loathing. A showpiece Sixties campus looking increasingly anachronistic in the paranoid, profit-driven Eighties, it is staffed by angst-ridden academics desperate to hang onto their privileged status amid swingeing cutbacks. It also houses what may well be the worst medical practice in the British Isles. Stephen Daker sees his new job at the Medical Centre as a chance to pursue excellence among a dedicated team and he's somewhat shaken when his colleagues turn out to be a wildly unpredictable dipsomaniac, a public school-educated fascist and an uber-feminist who sees illness as something men do to women. Dark secrets, sinister experiments, demented academics, STD epidemics, the Yankee Dollar, a desperate Creative with writer's block and a couple of nuns all conspire to make life on campus a hair-raising experience for Stephen! Andrew Davies' surreal, searingly funny look at sexual politics, medical malpractice and academic rivalry at the height of the Thatcher era won huge acclaim and a BAFTA nomination for Best Drama Series. This set comprises both series and A Very Polish Practice, the 1992 sequel film which finds Stephen coping with life in post-Communism Warsaw.