Andrew Davies In Conversation

Award-winning screenwriter Andrew Davies (Pride and Prejudice, Bridget Jones’ Diary, Bleak House) will be speaking about his BAFTA-winning BBC TV series A Very Peculiar Practice (1986), inspired by his time at Warwick University.

Andrew Davies taught at Warwick for 16 years, and A Very Peculiar Practice is shaped by his immersion in the university. The series is set on the campus of Lowlands University, a 1960s university beset by leaky roofs and cut-throat managerialism. Stephen Daker – the ‘New Man’ – is a fresh-faced, well-meaning new doctor at the university health practice, Jock McCannon, his boss, is a passionate holist and whisky-drinker fond of diagnosing the psychosocial ailments of his patients, colleagues, and indeed the University as a whole. Rose Marie is a feminist who believes that illness is something that men do to women. Bob Buzzard is far more interested in his computer and its diagnostic potential than his patients. And all four are under pressure from the Thatcherite policies embodied in Ernest Hemingway, the Vice-Chancellor.

A Very Peculiar Practice is a delightfully biting satire of universities in an age of Thatcher-led cutbacks; of sexual politics in a context marked by both feminism and the radical psychiatric theories of RD Laing; of the language of ‘phallocentrism’ in newly emerging academic disciplines; and of both psychoanalytic and pharmaceutical approaches to patients. All of this with a lightness of touch that ensured a hit series.

Come and hear Andrew Davies talk about the genesis of this series and its relationship to Warwick University – and have drinks and a chat with him afterwards.

Centre for the History of Medicine website
A Very Peculiar Practice on BBC Online