A Very Peculiar Practice - Season 1 (1986 Andrew Davies)

So many things oddly familiar, like Chen's line, 'Yes Steven, I know how to live in the twentieth century' and Daker erupting at the end of episode one at Jock's offer of a drink  - 'I'm still on duty!'  And the secret of P.J. Pettyman. Is this last one an old idea, or is this the origin of the idea (the one of the three who looks the most bumbling and incompetent is the decision maker)?

Anyway, it's very enjoyable, especially the relationship between Daker and Lyn Turtle (yes, many of the names are funny, the VC is 'Ernest Hemmingway'!) and the inter-doctor banter and manoeuvrings. This hotch potch of physicians is played by Peter Davison, Graham Crowden, Barbara Flynn and David Troughton (yes, Patrick's son).

Amanda Hillwood was of course the pathologist briefly in Morse. Lindy Whitford is the nurse, with John Bird, Takashi Kawahara, Jean Heywood (rebellious professor of history).

Unlikely guest stars are Hugh Grant and Kathy Burke, with Timothy West as a volatile professor.

The direction / action is a bit slow in dialogue scenes but the show is constantly inventive and funny, e.g. Catastrophe Theory, the source of the NSU outbreak, experimental drug 'Confidan' which causes red ears, the writer who is trying to write about the university for the BBC...