Dennis Potter

Dennis Christopher George Potter (17 May 1935 – 7 June 1994) was an English television dramatist, screenwriter and journalist. He is best known for his BBC TV serials Pennies from Heaven (1978), The Singing Detective (1986), and the television plays Blue Remembered Hills (1979) and Brimstone and Treacle (1976). His television dramas mixed fantasy and reality, the personal and the social, and often used themes and images from popular culture. Potter is widely regarded as one of the most influential and innovative dramatists to have worked in British television. Born in Gloucestershire and graduating from Oxford University, Potter initially worked in journalism. After standing for parliament as a Labour candidate at the 1964 general election, his health was affected by the onset of psoriatic arthropathy which necessitated Potter changing careers and led to him becoming a television dramatist. His new career began with contributions to the BBC's Wednesday Play anthology series in 1965, and he continued to work in the medium for the rest of his life. He also wrote screenplay adaptations for the Hollywood studios. He died of pancreatic cancer in 1994.

Works

The Singing Detective

From his hospital bed, a writer suffering from a skin disease hallucinates musical numbers and paranoid plots.

Release Date:2003-10-24

Department:Writing

Job:Screenplay

Vote Count:127

Cold Lazarus

The year is 2368 and a group of scientists are on the brink of a major breakthrough as they begin to tap into the memory of a man who died in the 1990s.

Release Date:1996-05-26

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

Episode Count:4

Vote Count:21

Karaoke

Daniel Feeld, writer of the film Karaoke, starts to believe that his characters are coming alive.

Release Date:1996-04-28

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

Episode Count:4

Vote Count:21

Midnight Movie

American producer James Boyce and his airhead wife Amber rent an English country mansion where the British horror flick "Smoke Rings" was filmed twenty years previous. Amber's mother was model-actress Mandy Mason, who died mysteriously after her appearance in "Smoke Rings." The property rental to Boyce was arranged by middle-aged lawyer Henry Harris, who continues to live with his lovesick memories of the late actress. Boyce invites Harris to dinner, and "Smoke Rings" airs on TV that same evening. During the following days, Harris observes Amber's behaviour paralleling events experienced both by her mother and in the movie.

Release Date:1994-12-26

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

Vote Count:1

An Interview with Dennis Potter

Dennis Potter a television dramatist talks about his work, politics and his fears for both.

Release Date:1994-11-19

Character:Himself

Message for Posterity

A version of Dennis Potter's play for television, remade shortly before his death as the original 1960s version had been wiped.

Release Date:1994-10-28

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

Mesmer

A biography of the eighteenth century Viennese physician, Franz Anton Mesmer, who used unorthodox healing practices based on his theory of "animal magnetism."

Release Date:1994-08-25

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

Vote Count:17

Visions of Heaven and Hell

Dennis Potter, Esther Dyson, William Gibson and other techno-thinkers appeared in this award-winning three-part documentary series which examined social changes brought about by new information technologies, along with other issues and dilemmas facing society in the 21st Century.

Release Date:1994-01-31

Character:Self

Lipstick on Your Collar

During the Suez Crisis of 1956, two young clerks at the stuffy Foreign Office in Whitehall display little interest in the decline of the British Empire. To their eyes, it can hardly compete with girls, rock music, and the intrigue of romantic entanglements.

Release Date:1993-02-21

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

Episode Count:6

Vote Count:25

Secret Friends

During a train ride, an anxiety attack leads middle-aged illustrator John into an identity crisis. As his marital problems merge and blur into his fantasy life with prostitutes and call girls, a long-dormant secret friend of his childhood surfaces in his delusions.

Release Date:1991-06-21

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Vote Count:11

Blackeyes

77-year-old Maurice James Kingsley writtes a successful novel about a fashion model, in this Dennis Potter miniseries. But Maurice’s furious niece recognises her life in its pages.

Release Date:1989-11-29

Department:Writing

Job:Screenplay

Episode Count:4

Vote Count:7

Christabel

An Englishwoman married to a German is torn between love of her country and love of her husband.

Release Date:1988-11-16

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

Episode Count:4

Vote Count:2

Track 29

Years after a desperate teenage Linda gives up her baby for adoption, she finds herself face-to-face with Martin, a young man claiming to be her long-lost son. Linda embraces Martin and in him finds a welcome reprieve from her unhappy marriage to the neglectful Henry. But soon Martin grows violent and becomes obsessed with Henry -- a philandering man whose only offspring is an expansive model train set that devours his waking hours.

Release Date:1988-05-15

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

Vote Count:38

Brimstone and Treacle

The Bates care for their severely disabled daughter Pattie. Martin arrives at their door claiming to be her college friend. He charms them into accepting him as a lodger and carer for Pattie, but Martin is not all he seems.

Release Date:1987-08-25

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

Vote Count:9

Visitors

A British businessman whose family company has been taken over by a multinational corporation clashes with his new American manager while they both vacation with their families at an Italian villa at their employer's expense. The manager's son fantasizes a murderous outcome.

Release Date:1987-02-22

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

Vote Count:1

The Singing Detective

Tormented and bedridden by a debilitating disease, a mystery writer relives his detective stories through his imagination and hallucinations.

Release Date:1986-11-16

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

Episode Count:6

Vote Count:38

Dreamchild

Eighty-year-old Alice Hargreaves is about to visit Columbia University to attend a reception in honor of author Lewis Carroll. As a child, Alice had a close friendship with the writer, and their relationship was the creative catalyst for Carroll's most beloved work. However, as Alice reflects on her experiences with the author, she realizes the complexity of their bond has had lasting, deeply felt ramifications.

Release Date:1985-10-04

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

Vote Count:32

Tender Is the Night

Dennis Potter adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel about how the rich languoring on the Riviera in the 1920s are slowly drawn into the coming depression is once again filmed with Peter Strauss, Mary Steenburgen, and John Heard in the leads.

Release Date:1985-09-23

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

Episode Count:6

Vote Count:6

Gorky Park

Police Inspector Renko tries to solve the case of three bodies found in Moscow's Gorky Park but finds his attempts to solve the crime impeded by his superiors. Working on his own, Renko seeks out more information and stumbles across a conspiracy involving the highest levels of the government.

Release Date:1983-12-15

Department:Writing

Job:Screenplay

Vote Count:296

Brimstone & Treacle

A strange young man has a sinister effect on the family of a middle-aged writer.

Release Date:1982-10-01

Department:Writing

Job:Screenplay

Vote Count:24

Pennies from Heaven

During the Great Depression, a sheet music salesman seeks to escape his dreary life through popular music and a love affair with an innocent school teacher.

Release Date:1981-12-11

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

Vote Count:93

Cream in My Coffee

Past and present intertwine: An elderly couple returns to the hotel where they became close when they were young and flashbacks to the earlier visit reveal the origins of both their pleasures and problems. Somewhere between the past and the present, Dennis Potter attempted to find "the shape of a life, of two lives..."

Release Date:1980-11-02

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

Vote Count:4

Rain on the Roof

Another of Dennis Potter's "visitation dramas": Adultery by John disturbs Janet, so she flirts with the simple, mistreated Billy during the middle of giving him a reading lesson. Unfortunately, it triggers aggressive behavior in Billy which he directs toward John.

Release Date:1980-10-26

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

Vote Count:4

Blade on the Feather

A reclusive, elderly author is visited by a young admirer … but both men are more than they claim to be.

Release Date:1980-10-19

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

Vote Count:8

Blue Remembered Hills

On an idyllic summer afternoon in the summer of 1943, a group of children play in the West Country hills, fields and forests. With no adults around, they indulge in spontaneous games and horseplay - sometimes echoing the distant war, at other times revealing their own insecurities and petty vindictiveness.

Release Date:1979-01-30

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

Vote Count:2

Pennies from Heaven

Pennies From Heaven is a 1978 BBC television drama serial written by Dennis Potter. The title is taken from a song of the same name written by Johnny Burke and Arthur Johnston. It was one of several Potter serials to mix the reality of the drama with a dark fantasy content, and the earliest of his works where the characters burst into miming to popular 1930s songs.

Release Date:1978-03-07

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

Episode Count:6

Vote Count:14

The Mayor of Casterbridge

Michael Henchard, an out-of-work hay-trusser, gets drunk at a fair and for five guineas sells his wife and child to a sailor. When the horror of his act finally sets in, Henchard swears he will not touch alcohol for twenty-one years. Through hard work and acumen, he becomes rich, respected, and eventually the mayor of Casterbridge. But eighteen years after his fateful oath, his wife and daughter, Elizabeth-Jane, return to Casterbridge, and his fortunes steadily decline.

Release Date:1978-01-22

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

Episode Count:7

Vote Count:3

Where Adam Stood

"Where Adam Stood" is "based on" the 1907 autobiography, "Father and Son", by Christian fundamentalist and naturalist Edmund Gosse, but Dennis Potter adapted only one section of the book, adding much material of his own invention. The drama was filmed on the Devon coast near Torquay, not far from where Gosse lived. With a literal belief in the Old Testament, Philip Gosse is opposed to the new theories of Charles Darwin, espoused here by biologist Brackley. Assuming "the Lord's will" determines the fate of his ailing son Edmund, Philip Gosse creates a life-threatening situation, even suggesting the illness is God's punishment because of Edmund's desire for a toy ship.

Release Date:1976-04-21

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

Vote Count:4

Double Dare

Martin Ellis (Alan Dobie) is a blocked screenwriter who invites Helen, an actress (Kika Markham), to a hotel in central London to discuss an idea for a play he is writing with her in mind. As they discuss the play, Martin discovers that a businessman and an escort named Carol are sat at a nearby table and appear to be speaking lines from the as yet unwritten piece. Martin becomes anxious at what will eventually become of the girl, already knowing that the play will not have a happy resolution

Release Date:1976-04-06

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

Late Call

Elderly couple Sylvia and Arthur Calvert are forced to move in with their widowed son and his children in Carshall New Town.

Release Date:1975-03-01

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

Episode Count:4

Schmoedipus

Glen, a complete stranger, appears at the door of Elizabeth Carter, a middle-aged woman, and claims to be the illegitimate son she gave away at birth.

Release Date:1974-06-20

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

Joe's Ark

The religious beliefs of pet shop owner Joe (Freddie Jones) are shaken by the terminal illness of his daughter Lucy (Angharad Rees). For Potter, this play "makes more than a wry nod at possibilities which can comprehend pain, or disgust, or the implacable presence of death itself."

Release Date:1974-02-14

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

Wessex Tales

An anthology series based on the Wessex Tales, a collection of short stories written by novelist Thomas Hardy.

Release Date:1973-11-07

Department:Writing

Job:Screenplay

Episode Count:1

Vote Count:2

Only Make Believe

Playwright Christopher Hudson finds his medical problem hinders his writing. He employs secretary Sandra George and dictates his new play to her, but tensions soon develop between the two. As Hudson creates, scenes from his play are dramatized and interpolated. The play being created is Dennis Potter's Angels Are So Few, seen with a totally different cast from the 1970 BBC production.

Release Date:1973-02-12

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

Follow The Yellow Brick Road

Jack Black is a disturbed actor who believes himself to be trapped in a television play, followed around by an invisible camera.

Release Date:1972-07-04

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

The Sextet

An anthology series of BBC television dramas on sexual themes. The same cast was featured in each production.

Release Date:1972-06-13

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

Episode Count:1

Casanova

The Italian adventurer and libertine Giovanni Jacopo Casanova lived from 1725 to 1798, but in this six-part series Dennis Potter attempted to find a contemporary relevance through his central themes of sex and religion. He commented that Casanova "was concerned with religious and sexual freedom, and these are the things we have to address ourselves to now." Casanova was imprisoned in Venice in 1755, and Potter used that event as a central device, constantly inter-cutting to contrast Casanova's amorous escapades, radiant, joyful and brightly lit, with his oppressive solitary confinement in the gloom of a half-darkened cell.

Release Date:1971-11-16

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

Episode Count:6

Vote Count:3

Traitor

Western journalists visit Moscow to interview Adrian Harris, a former controller in British intelligence who was also a double agent for the USSR. Harris believes in both Communism and Englishness, believing himself to have betrayed his class, but not his country. The press find these beliefs incompatible, and want to find out why he became a ‘traitor’. Harris is plagued by anxieties over both his actions and his upper-class childhood, and drinks to a state of collapse

Release Date:1971-10-14

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

Vote Count:2

Paper Roses

Facing retirement, elderly journalist Clarence Hubbard reflects on the pointlessness of a life wasted writing banal tabloid human interest, animal, and crime stories. Rather than go quietly to tend roses in a garden, Hubbard begins a series of violent actions not unlike those described in tabloids, and this is heightened by inter cutting tabloid headlines between scenes. Throughout, there are occasional shots of a television critic who watches this very play as it unfolds, and he writes a negative review filled with cleverly phrased but bitter invective.

Release Date:1971-06-13

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

Angels Are So Few

This neat, intense drama, labelled “a fable for television”, stars Tom Bell as the scruffy, childlike Michael Biddle, who is invited in from the cold of a suburban street by sexually frustrated, bored housewife Cynthia, played by Christine Hargreaves. He declares that he’s an angel, and Cynthia needs an angel, but in a way Michael fears...

Release Date:1970-11-05

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

Play for Today

Play for Today is a British television anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC1 from 1970 to 1984. During the run, more than three hundred programmes, featuring original television plays, and adaptations of stage plays and novels, were transmitted. The individual episodes were between fifty and a hundred minutes in duration.

Release Date:1970-10-15

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

Episode Count:7

Vote Count:8

Lay Down Your Arms

Dennis Potter used his own background as a Russian language clerk in the War Office when writing this play for ITV's SATURDAY NIGHT THEATRE series. At the time of the 1956 Suez Crisis and the Russian invasion of Hungary, Private Bob Hawk reports to the London Intelligence Office where the strength of Soviet troops is under scrutiny.

Release Date:1970-05-23

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

Vote Count:1

Son of Man

Dennis Potter's controversial reading of the life of Christ, with Jesus portrayed as a hearty, fiery, well-meaning carpenter who believes that people should try to love their enemies rather than fight all the time, but who is racked by self doubt as to whether or not he is the popularly anticipated Messiah.

Release Date:1969-04-16

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

Moonlight on the Highway

Writing for ITV's SATURDAY NIGHT THEATRE series, Dennis Potter introduced the notion that popular music expresses the yearning of the human spirit for a better world. A troubled young man, David Peters (Ian Holm), claims, "Once dreams were possible, that's what the popular songs told us." Rejecting rock music of the day, Peters is immersed in the tunes of Thirties crooner Al Bowlly (killed during the London blitz). He collects Bowlly memorabilia, publishes the Bowlly fan-club newsletter, and finds pleasure in lip-synching Bowlly records but his obsession with Bowlly masks certain darker events in his past.

Release Date:1969-04-12

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

Vote Count:2

A Beast with Two Backs

A young local girl is murdered by a mentally disturbed youth, but the villagers blame a stranger, an Italian traveling showman and his bear, rather than see the rot in their own camp.

Release Date:1968-11-20

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

Shaggy Dog

A no-nonsense businessman, Mr. Wilkie, is interviewed for a position with a top-of-the-line hotel chain corporation. During the interview, Wilkie attempts to complete a shaggy-dog story. His frustrations lead to a total breakdown. He suddenly snaps and pulls a gun on the interviewers.

Release Date:1968-11-10

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

Vote Count:1

The Company of Five

Release Date:1968-11-03

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

Episode Count:1

Vote Count:2

The Bone Grinder

George, an ineffectual and inoffensive clerk, and his prim wife Gladys reserve their greatest efforts for preserving their respectibility. Sam, a rough-necked American seaman, invades their dull suburban routine. The play examines the clash of cultures between a fading British Empire and the dominance of American materialistic values.

Release Date:1968-05-13

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

Where the Buffalo Roam

Poor Willy’s mind has been warped by too many Westerns. He sees gunfighters on every corner, even though he’s in 1960s Swansea. Some think Billy’s simple. His Auntie just thinks he’s creative. But he’s on a dark path as his vivid imaginings grow wilder, and the world in his head comes roaring out into reality.

Release Date:1966-11-02

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

Emergency Ward 9

Drama set in a men's hospital ward, written by Dennis Potter. Characters include a cunning bronchitic Londoner, a strapped-up Pole and a dying man who just wants a cup of tea.

Release Date:1966-04-11

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

VOTE, VOTE, VOTE for Nigel Barton

Candidate Nigel Barton goes from idealism to cynicism as he becomes disillusioned and suspicious of hollow campaign promises.

Release Date:1965-12-15

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

Vote Count:1

Stand Up, Nigel Barton

Semi-autobiographical TV play by Dennis Potter, from the BBC's 'Wednesday Play' series. It deals with the experiences of Nigel Barton, a young man from a poor mining community who wins a scholarship to Oxford University. The villagers accuse him of snobbery, while the rich University students treat him like a peasant. Uncertain of which sphere he should be moving in, Nigel tries to reconcile himself with his proud but stubborn father, and also succeed at University, despite its pretentions which apall him.

Release Date:1965-12-08

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

Alice

In this look at Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1898), aka Lewis Carroll, Dennis Potter mixed biographical drama with a psychological profile to explore the roots of Dodgson's creativity. Dodgson tells stories to ten-year-old Alice Liddell, leading to recreations of scenes adapted from ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND (1865), designed to resemble the original Sir John Tenniel illustrations.

Release Date:1965-10-13

Department:Writing

Job:Screenplay

Vote Count:1

Thirty-Minute Theatre

Thirty-Minute Theatre is an anthology drama series of short plays shown on BBC Television between 1965 and 1973, which was used in part at least as a training ground for new writers, on account of its short running length, and which therefore attracted many writers who later became well known. Thirty-Minute Theatre followed on from a similarly named ITV series, beginning on BBC2 in 1965 with an adaptation of the black comedy Parsons Pleasure. In 1967 BBC2 launched the UK's first colour service, with the consequence that Thirty-Minute Theatre became the first drama series in the country to be shown in colour.

Release Date:1965-10-07

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

Episode Count:1

Vote Count:5

The Wednesday Play

The Wednesday Play is an anthology series of British television plays which ran on BBC1 from October 1964 to May 1970. The plays were usually written for television, although adaptations from other sources also featured. The series gained a reputation for presenting contemporary social dramas, and for bringing issues to the attention of a mass audience that would not otherwise have been discussed on screen.

Release Date:1964-09-30

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

Episode Count:1

Vote Count:4

That Was The Week That Was

That Was the Week That Was, informally TWTWTW or TW3, is a satirical television comedy programme on BBC Television in 1962 and 1963. It was devised, produced and directed by Ned Sherrin and presented by David Frost. An American version by the same name aired on NBC from 1964 to 1965, also featuring Frost. The programme is considered a significant element of the satire boom in the United Kingdom in the early 1960s. It broke ground in comedy through lampooning the establishment and political figures. Its broadcast coincided with coverage of the politically charged Profumo affair and John Profumo, the politician at the centre of the affair, became a target for derision. TW3 was first broadcast on Saturday 24 November 1962.

Release Date:1962-11-24

Department:Writing

Job:Writer

Episode Count:16

Vote Count:1

Between Two Rivers

After a brief tutelage with innovative BBC documentary producer Denis Mitchell, Dennis Potter teamed with producer Anthony de Lotbiniere to film a documentary (later described by David Niven as "absolutely wonderful"). Returning to the Berry Hill roots of his childhood, Potter used interviews with locals (including his parents) to show changes in the working-class traditions of the Forest of Dean, where "the green forest has a deep black heart beneath its sudden hills, pushing up slag heaps and gray little villages clustering around the coal."

Release Date:1960-01-01

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Vote Count:3