Peter Viney's Blog

A Very Polish Practice
by Andrew Davies
Directed by David Tucker

1992 (broadcast 6 September 1992)

Screen One TV drama, 90 minutes

CAST

Peter Davison – Dr Stephen Dakar
Joanna Kanska – Grete Grotowska (now married to Stephen)
Adam Przedrzymirski – Tomasz
David Troughton – Dr Bob Buzzard
Alfred Molina – Tadeusz Melnik
Trevor Peacock- Reynard Krapowski
Dariusz Odija – Marek
Polly Hemingway- Ewa
Nina Marc – Helena
Maria Quoos – Maria
Agnieszka Robotka – Renata

SEE ALSO: A VERY PECULIAR PRACTICE SERIES ONE

A VERY PECULIAR PRACTICE SERIES TWO

This was the one-off sequel to the two series of A Very Peculiar Practice. It was a bold move, locating the entire story in Poland, though Andrew Davies hadn’t much choice except a radical re-think, having left Lowlands University being demolished and Dr Stephen Dakar and Grete Grotowski with a baby at the end of Series Two. Comments online suggest you need to have seen the series before. I’m not so sure.

It’s three years after the Berlin Wall fell. Those were interesting times in any central European city. Stephen and Grete have moved to Warsaw, and four years have passed. Stephen has a job as a hospital doctor in an over-stretched and underfunded hospital. Grete is lecturing on Art History in Krakow two days a week. Their son is called Tomasz.

It’s less of a black comedy. Dr Bob Buzzard has been retained from the two series. He is now a medical salesman for Hamburger International Pharmaceuticals, visiting Warsaw for a conference. His thread of the story with multiple physical mishaps is the main comic part. Dr Krapowski, the chain-smoking (even in operating theatres) hospital director and his mistress / secretary is the other comedy thread.

Otherwise, it’s more about romantic angst, and a touch of chase drama. We still have the recurring themes … the two nuns turn up everywhere, and Stephen’s nightmares still feature.

The major character addition is Grete’s ex-boyfriend, Tadeusz (Alfred Molina), who wants her back. He is a gangster, drug dealer and millionaire who enabled her to leave Poland when she was eighteen, and she promised then she would return to him if asked. He is back on the scene, and Grete is torn between them.

At the start, we see the little family with their Polski-Fiat 126 … Grete off to Krakow, Stephen to drive Tomasz to nursery school.

Grete: So you think we have the perfect life here or something?

Stephen likes Poland. He feels needed. Warsaw is the place he’s felt most needed since Walsall. The hospital has no pethidine, patients are in agony. The other doctor working with Stephen has been offered a job in Sweden. The operating theatre table, being 47 years old, has fallen apart. He sees a new private room with luxury fittings and a wealthy man sipping vodka.

Stephen goes to see Dr Krapowski, who explains that privatising facilities is the future (as Bob Buzzard, Ernie Hemmingway and Jack Daniels in the preceding series). Stephen objects, being well-used to objecting to privatisation through both previous series, and Krapowski warns him that he is not as secure as he thinks.

Krapowski These are complicated times, experimental times. A lot of people now are saying ‘Poland only for the Poles.’ You should really be aware of this, Stephen. Some people … Not so fond of you as I am.

Bob Buzzard arrives, chaotically, and gets into trouble (the guy in the next seat was smuggling heroin) then is collected by gangsters in a Mercedes (Tadeusz’s men). Tadeusz’s company is his rival. He is dropped off at the hotel, and runs into Stephen. They end up at the 5 star Marriot (more later) where they see Tadeusz and a woman who looks like Grete disappearing into a club.

Stephen dashes to Krakow, where Grete’s friend is enigmatic about where she is. He goes to the university and sees her.

Back at the hospital, Dr Krapowski is now wearing a suit presented by Dr Bob Buzzard (a note back to Series One!) and tells him that an important man is organizing the privatisation, but there is a problem because people think he’s a drug dealer … Tadeusz Melnik.

Bob is picked up again and taken to a cathedral, where Tadeusz appears and warns him off.

The story comes out as Grete tells him all. Stephen is summoned to a medical emergency, is coshed by one of Tadeusz’s thugs and taken for a car ride. He escapes, but runs into Tadeusz who explains his intentions to take Grete with him … he has to leave the country. He points out he could easily just kill Stephen.

Bob has more adventures … he orders room service and is misheard (no joke spoilers) and a whore turns up who departs in the night with his wallet and trousers, leaving him begging Stephen to loan him a pair.

It all works out after Stephen dashes to the airport where Grete is at the gate with Tadeusz.

Polish connections …

I have to mentally run my ethnicity / comedy test. How would I feel watching it with Polish friends? OK, I think. Poles get English humour, and I’ve often discussed the post-Berlin Wall era (1989-mid 90s) with them.

I’ve been to Poland four times. The first was late 1991, just before this was filmed. It rings all sorts of bells. We were in Lodz for a conference, then I went to Warsaw for a couple of talks. As Bob Buzzard found out, “wine” meant Bulgarian. The red was good. The white awful.

I’m surprised at the run-down hospital depicted. Having been in Hungary (before the wall), then Poland and Berlin just after, the standard of schools around 1989 was high. Maybe I was only taken to the best ones, but several shamed British ones in equipment and facilities. Teaching was highly-respected as a profession, and standards were high. Teachers knew about linguistic theory. They knew the main applied linguistics text. Speaking in England AFTER Poland and Hungary in those years, I found I had to explain who important writers were, in a way I hadn’t had to do in Central Europe.

I thought their health system was supposed to be good too, though I never experienced it. I know that nowadays people fly to Poland for root canal treatment.

The gangster element? Yes. As Tadeusz explains, he was a millionaire by 1983. These guys flourished under communism, and continued to profit after the switch.

Two things I remember. On the road to Warsaw, the three Poles with me got very upset when we saw Russian soldiers and trucks at road junctions. It was ‘The Russians are coming back!’ Then we passed a convoy of about 100 East German school buses. As we later found out, they had been banned as too polluting in the new Berlin, and bought by the Russians who were taking them in convoy to Russia. But it was real fear in the car. Things had not totally stabilised.

The other was Warsaw. I think it was the Marriott we see in the film (or the Sheraton). Five star hotels in Warsaw pre-dated 1989 … all those Polish-American tourists seeing the old country. The distributor for my publisher had the largest Citroen DS … a fabulous though quirky car. We were talking about cars, and he said he’d always wanted a Mercedes. I said, ‘Surely it’s the same price as this Citroen,’
‘I can’t be seen in a Mercedes!’ he said, ‘I’m a respectable bookseller. Only the Mafia drive Mercedes!’ (He meant the local version … gangsters.)

So we arrived at the hotel. All the taxis were new Mercedes … NOT the old ones seen in the film. ‘Stolen from Germany,’ he whispered. We had books to unload, so pulled up in a taxi bay. The next minute three taxi drivers were threatening him, and one showed him a large knife. He moved the car. In the hotel he complained, They said they couldn’t do anything or they’d be shut down by the taxi union. So 1992 was a touch Wild West in Warsaw as someone says in this film. (I saw no sign elsewhere.)

Language

This is an issue. Quite often, people speak in Polish. When Stephen is in the hospital, he says a couple of words in Polish to patients. To other patients, including a child, he speaks in English. Though presumably he’s speaking Polish.

Then neither Alfred Molina nor Stephen Peacock are Poles, but speak Polish-accented English, somewhat risky with Polish actors around you, but I guess that helps. Grete’s friends are Polish but played by English actors.

Overall

It’s not as funny as the series, and there is quite a strong line between the funny bits (Bob Buzzard, Krapowski, his mistress) and the serious bits. The lead actors … Peter Davison, Joanna Kanska, David Troughton, plus additions Alfred Molina and Stephen Peacock, are first class. The script is first class. The direction is first class. That was a given. I do like it, and it comes as the 5th DVD in the A Very Peculiar Practice box set.

LINKS ON THIS BLOG:

DAVID TROUGHTON
Titus Andronicus, RSC 2017
The Shoemaker’s Holiday, RSC
King Lear, RSC 2016
The Merry Wives of Windsor, RSC 2018