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Graham Fuller, Angels and Devils: The Dark Dreams of Dennis Potter, Sight & Sound Magazine, July 2014, p.41. Arena: Painting the Clouds: A Portrait of Dennis Potter (2003)". The Encyclopedia of Fantastic Film & Television. Archived from the original on 6 April 2012 . Retrieved 28 August 2019.

Dennis Christopher George Potter (17 May 1935 – 7 June 1994) was an English dramatist, best known for The Singing Detective (1986). His widely acclaimed television dramas mixed fantasy and reality, the personal and the social. He was particularly fond of using themes and images from popular culture. Such was his reputation that he convinced BBC 2 and Channel 4 to co-operate in screening his final two works, written in the months he was aware of his impending death. If you think this female-male contest for ownership of narrative sounds to have come from some sort of literary theory, then I think you are right. But this is not an academic, dry read. It has many pop flourishes such as the already mentioned suspected murder, as well as sex, romance and maybe some dark secrets, too. In fact, at one point, the 'real' author complains of 'embarrassment' at the popular romance turn the tale takes. The two related stories, Karaoke and Cold Lazarus, were eventually broadcast in 1996, one set in the present and the other in the far future, both feature Albert Finney as the same principal character. Both series were released on DVD on 6 September 2010. [36] Other works [ edit ] Novels [ edit ]Morris, Stephen (27 June 2013). "Dennis Potter archive offers glimpse into mind of celebrated writer". The Guardian. Potter's Son of Man (The Wednesday Play, 1969), starring the Irish actor Colin Blakely, gave an alternative view of the last days of Jesus, and led to Potter being accused of blasphemy. The same year, Potter contributed Moonlight on the Highway to ITV's Saturday Night Theatre strand. The play centred around a young man who attempts to blot out memories of the sexual abuse he suffered as child in his obsession with the music of Al Bowlly. As well as being an intensely personal play for Potter, it is notable for being his first foray in the use of popular music to heighten the dramatic tension in his work. Griffin's Eye, Daily Mirror, 30 November 1989 (reproduced in Dennis Potter - A Biography by Humphrey Carpenter, Faber and Faber 1998, image no. 36) Potter's career in the early 1980s was spent as a screenwriter for the cinema. He returned to the BBC for a co-production with 20th Century Fox, writing the scripts for a widely praised but seldom-seen miniseries of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night (1985) with Mary Steenburgen as Nicole Diver. Potter's career as a television playwright began with The Confidence Course, an exposé of the Dale Carnegie Institute that drew threats of litigation. Although Potter effectively disowned the play, it is notable for its use of non-naturalistic dramatic devices (in this case breaking the fourth wall) which would become hallmarks of Potter's subsequent work. Broadcast as part of the BBC's The Wednesday Play strand in 1965, The Confidence Course proved successful and Potter was invited for further contributions. His next play, Alice (1965), was a controversial drama chronicling the relationship between Lewis Carroll and his muse Alice Liddell. Potter's most celebrated works from this period are the semi-autobiographical plays Stand Up, Nigel Barton! and Vote, Vote, Vote for Nigel Barton; the former the tale of a miner's son going to Oxford University where he finds himself torn between two worlds, the latter featuring the same character standing as a Labour candidate — his disillusionment with the compromises of electoral politics is based on Potter's own experience. Both plays received praise from critics' circles but aroused considerable tension at the BBC for their potentially incendiary critique of party politics.

Michael Billington and Dennis Potter "Dennis Potter: there is a nostalgic, right wing impulse in England", The Guardian, 2015 (reprint of 1979 radio interview) There is no writer alive, either in print and certainly not in the media, who ever managed to write works that wove together such mesmerising layers of meta-fiction and autobiography as Dennis Potter did. There are few efforts in Potter’s oeuvre that operate on the level of linear narrative – most are complex works that weave the author in as an integral part of the text.The Independent, 7 January 2005, previewing Arena – Dennis Potter:It's in the Songs! It's in the Songs! BBC Four