A Very Peculiar Practice was a BBC drama/comedy/satire that I was addicted to in the 1980s, principally because my darling Peter Davison starred in it, following his stints in All Creatures Great and Small and of course Dr Who. AVPP was written by Andrew Davies, who also adapted Pride and Prejudice as well as many other TV series (Middlemarch, War & Peace). I think AVPP was his only original series. It only lasted two seasons, and this is the novelisation of the second one.
It was a weird show, with eccentric characters and a touch of surrealism, like the unexplained presence of two nuns flapping mysteriously around the campus. Davison starred as thoroughly nice Dr Stephen Daker, working in the medical centre of Lowlands University, alongside truculent Bob Buzzard, gloomy Jock McCannon, and smoothly terrifying feminist Rose Marie. Some of their catchphrases still echo in my brain, forty years on -- the pissant swamp, as a woman, rude nasty girl.
Alas, evil Vice-Chancellor Jack Daniels' plan to eviscerate the university and convert it to a weapons development facility, which used to seem like wild satire, is now closer to business as usual for higher education. And I'm not sure how I feel abut Davies' going all meta, with his character of Ron Rust, who wanders the campus writing a TV series about a university for the BBC...
A Very Peculiar Practice was a trip down memory lane. I still have illegal videotapes of the show somewhere -- but sadly, no machine to watch them on!
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