writers_reign Aspiring writers used to be advised to 'write what you know' and clearly Dennis Potter heard this at his mother's knee and took it to heart. What he knows is the Forest of Dean, as well he might having been born there and it turns up again and again in his work not least in the two mini-series most associated with him, Pennies From Heaven and The Singing Detective. It appears increasingly that Potter is in great danger of being cultified (to coin a term) in a similar way to Hitchcock, two cases in which beyond A Shadow Of A Doubt substance is thin on the ground. There is much to admire in The Singing Detective and if nothing else it offers superior quality both in terms of songwriter - Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hammerstein - and performer - Dick Haymes, Bing Crosby - to Pennies From Heaven and the acting is hard to fault yet it remains a work of set pieces rather than a richly satisfying whole.

Graham Greene The Singing Detective is one of those great works that inspire something deep within the viewer, leaving them both shaken and elated by the spectacle they have just witnessed. Few cinematic works can inspire such a feeling, let alone a work for television; and it is this sense of genius that elevates this work above the comparatively "okay" likes of say, Cracker, Brideshead Revisited, and Prime Suspect et al. This is down to the fact that The Singing Detective is a work far greater than anything else; a microcosm of life, love, anger, defeat, consciousness and the sub-conscious. It deals with the intricate realms of fantasy and reality, the written, the understood and the real. If this sounds complicated then we're on the right track, because this is one of Dennis Potter's most detailed narrative constructs. The story chronicles a writer's decent into personal hell, as well as a decent into a book being written in his own imagination and a book written many years before; with his past, present and future all jostling for our attention throughout the epic, six-hours-plus running-time.It is a testament to Potter's ability as a screenwriter that the whole thing zips along so quickly, with the multi-layered story never pausing for a moment; constantly being carried along at every step by the combined genius of Potter's characters, the skillful and visually rich direction of Jon Amiel and that towering central performance from the brilliant Michael Gambon. The writing is truly ecstatic, with Potter obviously relishing every chance he gets to play with both the musical and detective-movie clichés - bringing to mind both Casablanca and Potter's own-classic Pennies From Heaven - whilst the dialog of Gambon's inner-monologues have more in common with the profane poetry of 60's playwrights that anything you'd expect to hear on BBC 2. The story also has obvious political overtones, with Potter using the hospital setting of the present sequences to double as an allegory of 80's Britain under the tyrannical leadership of Margaret Thatcher (bringing to mind the Elvis Costello song Tramp the Dirt Down and those other hospital set political parables, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Britannia Hospital).The story is also somewhat semi-autobiographical from Potter's point of view, with the writer, at this point in time, suffering from the same psoriatic-arthritis that Gambon's character Marlow has (creating that devastating, iconic image of the paralytic Marlow languishing half-naked in bed, being greased by a young Joanne Whally). There are also the much deeper autobiographical aspects with the young Marlow's childhood in the shady and evergreen Forest of Dean, in which the pastoral setting gives way to some truly shocking moments; recalling similar childhood traumas from such diverse examples as Iain Bank's Complicity and Rob Reiner's film Stand by Me. However, within this mire of bitterness, surrealism, bouts of lip-synced cabaret and phantasmagorical shoot-outs, there is also a great deal of humour. Anyone who has seen one of Potter's early TV plays or, for that matter, later classics like Karaoke and Cold Lazarus will know of his depth and range as both a humorist and a satirist; and it is this darkly acerbic wit that underlines the central narrative strands of The Singing Detective.Some would argue that this is the best that television has to offer, though I would politely disagree. The Singing Detective is a work of art too good to be considered simply for television. Now, thanks to the magic of DVD we have the chance to experience Potter's classic in its definitive unabridged, unedited, uninterrupted from. A truly great piece of work.

FlickMan Apparently this is a "cult" movie (OK, miniseries) like Rocky Horror or Repo Man. There's a small group of people who love it and think it's the greatest thing ever, while most of the world is blissfully unaware of its existence. A friend lent me a copy, and I really couldn't get into it. It's just too oblique. There's tons of stuff going on, on all sorts of levels, but somehow I didn't care. The production quality is mediocre at best, and the main character, Marlow, is not all that likable. There are some great moments -- like when the hospital doctors burst into a rousing rendition of "Dem Bones" -- but mostly it just meanders along, zig-zagging between past and present, reality and fantasy. If you want to watch a surreal movie, I recommend "Brazil" over this, any day!

RobertF87 The BBC television production of "The Singing Detective" caused a huge stir when it was first broadcast back in 1986, and now it is commonly acknowledged as a classic.Hospitalised by a severe case of psoriasis, crime novelist Philip E Marlow, escapes the grim realities of ward life into a rich inner world where he imagines himself as the "singing detective", hero of his own novels. From these fantasies he drifts to memories of his grim childhood during World War Two, and paranoid fantasies about his estranged wife.The script, by celebrated writer Dennis Potter, is truly remarkable. The acting is good, especially from Michael Gambon (as Philip Marlow) who is perfect in a very difficult role.The series lasts nearly seven hours and yet never fails to entertain. The series has a rich vain of dark humour and features some hilariously surreal song-and-dance sequences.This is a true masterpiece and, very possibly, the best TV series ever made. Don't miss any opportunity to catch it.