VISION ON SOUND

ADAM HENLEY on A VERY PECULIAR PRACTICE.

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on May 24th 2026.

This week ADAM HENLEY returns to the show because he has recently been watching a BBC drama series that has been one of my personal favourites for a very long time, and he wanted to talk to me about it.

The show in question is called A VERY PECULIAR PRACTICE, featuring darkly bizarre tales of the various machinations, goings on, double-dealings, dustcarts, and nun-related antics occuring on campus at the UNIVERSITY OF LOWLANDS in the mid-to-late 1980s. Written under intriguing circumstances (and with a very deft post-modern touch), by ANDREW DAVIES, and directed in its entirety by DAVID TUCKER, it was a somewhat surreal (and sometimes very black) comedy drama that appeared for one seven-part series of fifty-minute episodes in 1986, followed by another in 1988, and was then resurrected for a one-off Screen One television movie called A VERY POLISH PRACTICE four years later in 1992.

The series starred PETER DAVISON as DR STEPHEN DAKER, an idealistic young GP who is looking for a fresh start as he joins a university medical practice at a time of great change in the higher education sector. The health centre is staffed, alongside LINDY WHITEFORD’s long-suffering nurse MAUREEN and GILLIAN RAINE’s terrifying receptionist MRS KRAMER, by a mis-matched trio of Doctors who include the bisexual ultra-feminist DR ROSE MARIE (played by BARBARA FLYNN), the hyper-ambitious and empathy-free DR ROBERT (BOB) BUZZARD (played by DAVID TROUGHTON), and the decrepit and often sozzled DR JOCK McCANNAN (played by GRAHAM CROWDEN).

In the first series DR DAKER becomes romantically involved with a post-graduate police officer, LYN TURTLE (played by AMANDA HILLWOOD – later pathologist GRAYLING RUSSELL alongside INSPECTOR MORSE), and in the second he becomes more deeply involved with the Polish arts lecturer GRETE GROTOWSKA (as played by JOANNA KANSKA).

Across the series, the campus is overseen by a pair of scheming VICE CHANCELLORS, ERNEST HEMINGWAY “THE POISON DWARF” of the first run is played by the impeccable JOHN BIRD, and his JFK-channelling replacement JACK DANIELS in the second run is played by MICHAEL J SHANNON.

A host of well-known character actors like TIMOTHY WEST, JAMES GROUT, JOE MELIA, FRANCES WHITE, JEAN HEYWOOD, ROBERT LANG, PETER BLAKE, and CLIVE SWIFT feature in guest roles, and the series also contains early performances by soon to be well-known faces such as HUGH GRANT, KATHY BURKE, SIMON RUSSELL BEALE and MARK ADDY.

The series also features an excellent (and very earworm-ish) theme song written by DAVE GREENSLADE and performed by ELKIE BROOKS that somehow, despite us having to have a somewhat appropriate two attempts at recording this particular show, ADAM and I almost unforgivably fail to mention.

For me, A VERY PECULIAR PRACTICE is truly one of the great drama series of the 1980s and is well worth seeking out if you are a fan of well-written and clever television drama, and I do hope you’ll be tempted to track it down once you’ve listen to what I hope is an entertaining hour that might help to persuade you.

PLEASE NOTE - For Copyright reasons, musical content sometimes has to be removed for the podcast edition. All the spoken word content remains (mostly) as it was in the broadcast version. Hopefully this won't spoil your enjoyment of the show.

WARREN CUMMINGS presents a right load of Sherlocks.

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on May 17th 2026.

SHERLOCK HOLMES on television is a topic that we tend to return to time and again on VISION ON SOUND, and for very good reasons. Not only is the character a television staple that runs through pretty much the whole of television history, and in several countries, across the decades of television production, but it is often used as a mark of distinction and generally brings out the very best that television is capable of being.

Earlier on this year TYLER ADAMS came on to talk about THE MASTER BLACKMAILER in Granada Television’s prestigious series THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, but this week WARREN CUMMINGS is back, and he promised me a right load of Sherlocks, so how could I resist?

So do join us as we meander around various iterations of SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE’s most famous creation, and transport us back to, well, several different multiverses offering up many alternative interpretations of crime-fighting, Victorian style…

PLEASE NOTE - For Copyright reasons, musical content sometimes has to be removed for the podcast edition. All the spoken word content remains (mostly) as it was in the broadcast version. Hopefully this won't spoil your enjoyment of the show.

STEVE HATCHER and ANDREW-MARK THOMPSON discuss THE RIGHT END OF TIME, a TIMESLIP event that took place recently at QUAD in Derby, featuring STEVE's interviews with CHERYL BURFIELD, SPENCER BANKS, and event co-organiser STEVE HARDY.

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on May 10th 2026.

On April the 18th QUAD in Derby hosted THE RIGHT END OF TIME, an event all about the early 70s classic TV series TIMESLIP. For various reasons, I couldn’t go myself, but STEVE HATCHER gamely offered to record some chats with STEVE HARDY who organised the event alongside ANDREW-MARK THOMPSON, and special guests, actors SPENCER BANKS and CHERYL BURFIELD, which open this week’s VISION ON SOUND.

STEVE HATCHER and ANDREW also joined me the following week to reflect upon the day’s events, and try to crack through the time barrier, 56 years on.

PLEASE NOTE - For Copyright reasons, musical content sometimes has to be removed for the podcast edition. All the spoken word content remains (mostly) as it was in the broadcast version. Hopefully this won't spoil your enjoyment of the show.

PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI lloks at THE LUCY SHOW and HERE'S LUCY.

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on May 3rd 2026.

As a lot of you may already know from one or two of his previous appearances on VISION ON SOUND, our friend PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI himself, is a big fan of the kind of archive television that features women in prominent roles, holding their own against the prevailing masculine dominance that featured in most of the television of the time. PAUL has come on to the show to talk about the more female-oriented dramas and comedies that were being made at the time, featuring women who were far more than just the sidekicks, housewives and mothers that society often demanded that they portray, and somehow managed to break the moulds, constraints and expectations that America and the world insisted women should meekly conform to.

One of the many names that he has enjoyed talking about is LUCILLE BALL, who was something of a powerhouse in American television not least because of her six-year stint on the sitcom I LOVE LUCY in the 1950s. Such was her star power that she became a legendary television producer with DESILU PRODUCTIONS which went on to produce three of the most iconic drama series of the 1960s, THE UNTOUCHABLES, STAR TREK and MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, two of which are still proving to be just as popular today as they were back in the 1960s.

PAUL has recently been watching two of LUCILLE BALL’s later sitcom successes and wanted to discuss what he had seen of them with me today. These were the ground-breaking THE LUCY SHOW from the mid-1960s, and HERE’S LUCY which followed it. Both of these shows ran for six seasons, and were just as popular when she chose to end them as they always had been, with the latter holding its own alongside other iconic series such as THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW and BEWITCHED in the cauldron of female emancipation that brewed in the early 1970s.

PLEASE NOTE - For Copyright reasons, musical content sometimes has to be removed for the podcast edition. All the spoken word content remains (mostly) as it was in the broadcast version. Hopefully this won't spoil your enjoyment of the show.

STEVE HATCHER on OUR FRIENDS IN THE NORTH (part two of two).

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on April 26th 2026.

OUR FRIENDS IN THE NORTH was an epic drama series produced by the BBC in 1996. Written by PETER FLANNERY and based upon his own stage play, it consisted of nine 63 to 75 minute episodes, each of which charted events in a particular year in the lives of four friends from Tyneside as they survived the ups and downs of their complex, interconnected, and political experiences across three turbulent decades from 1964 to 1995.

Often heart-breaking, but also occasionally life-affirming, it’s been argued that this series does a lot to confirm some suspicions that it’s grim up north, but it starred (and arguably made stars of) CHRISTOPHER ECCLESTON, GINA McKEE, MARK STRONG and DANIEL CRAIG as NICKY, MARY, TOSKER and GEORDIE respectively, and weaved tales of corruption in local government and the police force, as well as documenting the effects of civil turmoil and several destructive political choices, and how they affected the lives of these four particular northern friends as they grew older.

Also featuring a host of notable actors, and featuring star turns from PETER VAUGHN and FREDA DOWIE as NICKY’S troubled parents, this production cost £8 MILLION to make which famously consumed half of the entire drama budget of BBC2 for the year.

Earlier this year STEVE HATCHER had been eagerly devouring this series and posting his thoughts about it on FACEBOOK, and offered to talk about the series with me for VISION ON SOUND. Naturally, this gave us a lot to talk about, and we over-ran somewhat, so this week we’ll be talking about the second half of the story, as well as the radio remake from 2022 which attempted to bring the story up to date.

PLEASE NOTE - For Copyright reasons, musical content sometimes has to be removed for the podcast edition. All the spoken word content remains (mostly) as it was in the broadcast version. Hopefully this won't spoil your enjoyment of the show.