In honour of Cathode Ray Tube's splendid article on The Singing Detective here's my all-time favourite TV moment...
My mum was obsessed with Dennis Potter, and I think she saw a lot of herself in Marlowe's isolation, aloofness and frustration (as, increasingly, do I). There were uncanny echoes of the long spells she'd spent in hospital over the years and her escape into a fantasy dreamworld of old pop songs. For me, the brilliance of Potter's talent was being able to capture the bewildering complexity of real people in his work. His writing holds more profound truths than the kitchen sink naturalists he'd graduated alongside simply because he approached the way he communicated so differently. He used every facet of the medium to take those characters to their most wonderful or terrifying extremes. It might be a horribly ironic song and dance routine haunting the protagonist, adults playing children at their cruelest or an inversion of conventional morality, such as the devil raping a disabled girl back to health. There's echoes of that daring melding of character and style in Kaufman and Almodóvar films, but I can't think of another writer who managed that so successfully on TV.
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I have never been quite certain that I've seen all of The Singing Detective, since I think the last time it ran on terrestrial television was shortly after D.P. died, which places me in my early teens, and both my parents were rather apprehensive about me getting exposed to the stuff. (I clearly remember asking my Dad what he thought of it around this time, to which he growled "I imagine it holds appeal ... to people with twisted minds.")
ReplyDeleteI know, for instance, that no more than a year or two ago I caught a re-run of the final episode on satellite TV - that immeasurably moving sequence where Marlowe walks slowly out of shot with Nicola. But the place it has in my heart is all about the scriptbook, which I bought when I was around 17 and have read and re-read again and again to the present day.
What you lose, of course, by that is the extraordinary way that everything written down is choreographed so distinctly, so unmistakably. The presence of a controlling intent and the dreamlike logic it delights in is palpable all through his strongest work, and for someone (like me) who delights in surrendering to a storyteller, it's unmistakable, pungent stuff.
(One of the things that instantly comes to mind in terms of a comparison, in fact, is The Prisoner. Eerily, the last episode of The Prisoner also uses "Dry Bones" in a remarkably similar way, albeit in a different rendition.)
I remember the premier broadcast, it was pretty 'big deal' TV at the time ( we only had 3 or 4 channels then ) and probably the whole country watched it, what I remember most is the exact instant I realised the whole point of the story - and what was actually going on, and that he was writing the book in his head as his illness progressed. It was the first time I'd ever been able to understand something that wasn't literal ( can't remember exactly how old I was ), but I was probably already way ahead of my parents who just stared blankly at the screen.
ReplyDeleteI also have a vivid recollection of the old man with Parkinson's reacting painfully to the God Bothering doctor who tried to preach to the ward. It's been a blueprint for the rest of my life.
Tried to comment earlier but I cocked it up!
ReplyDeleteAnyway, big thanks to John for the kind comments on the review of 'The Singing Detective'. I did rewatch all six episodes and it's still a fantastic piece of television. One that I think was somewhat ahead of its time in terms of non-linear storytelling. It's influence can still be felt. For me, it really demonstrated the power of television drama, something I hadn't felt to such a degree since I'd first clapped eyes on The Naked Civil Servant in 1975 or I, Claudius in 1976.
More Potter from me soon. I plan to tackle 'Pennies From Heaven' next!