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Ben Thompson (ed) Ban This Filth!: Letters From the Mary Whitehouse Archive, London: Faber, 2012, p.85. Melvyn Bragg's interview with Potter, along with an earlier South Bank Show item about a 1978 theatre production of (the then banned TV play) Brimstone and Treacle, is included in the DVD set of the dramatist's work for London Weekend Television. 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 television serials Pennies from Heaven (1978) and The Singing Detective (1986) as well as the BBC television plays Blue Remembered Hills (1979) and Brimstone and Treacle (1976). [1] 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. The Singing Detective (1986), featuring Michael Gambon, used the dramatist's own problems with the skin disease psoriasis, for Potter an often debilitating condition leading to hospital admission, as a means to merge the lead character's imagination with his perception of reality. Bennett, Alan (21 January 1999). "What I did in 1998". London Review of Books. 21 (2) . Retrieved 10 October 2020. 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.

This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. ( July 2018) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) Her blank slate personality is written and rewritten by more than one author at any one time, from various perspectives, including, but not limited to, ownership and revenge. Some of the character types are lifted piecemeal from other genres, further blurring the lines between what’s written and real, what’s imagined and what’s being or has already been lived. Nothing is simple. a b Lawson, Mark (7 June 1994). "Obituary: Dennis Potter". The Independent . Retrieved 7 February 2023. In some regards, it's Potter-does-Potter, really - there's The Enduring Mystery Of Women, rooting and bits of improbable nudity. There's no doubt that though the main male character of the novel shares a name with an Amis, the doddering, farting author is something of a stand-in for the ageing Potter himself: all befuddlement and teddy bear attachment. Morris, Stephen (27 June 2013). "Dennis Potter archive offers glimpse into mind of celebrated writer". The Guardian.Potter, Dennis (September 2015). "Note 336". The Art of Invective: Selected Non-Fiction 1953–94. Oberon Books. ISBN 978-1-78319-203-8. Burrell, Ian (24 February 1997). "That nice Alan Bennett takes the gloves off for Tory politicians, the Queen Mother - and Dennis Potter". The Independent . Retrieved 10 October 2020.

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. Potter’s final commission came from The Daily Telegraph Arts & Books section, prompted by the TV interview in March, to which he replied on 16 May, after honouring his television commitments: “I am pleased to tell you that I have completed Karaoke and Cold Lazarus – which I regard as essentially one eight-part piece. Now all that effort is of course evaporating into an overwhelming sense of loss, I itch to scribble something.” [34] Immediately he was prompted to consider "the prospect of confronting imminent death" and on 25 May he submitted “my first and last short story” titled "Last Pearls", [35] which was published on 4 June, days before he died. The Independent, 7 January 2005, previewing Arena – Dennis Potter:It's in the Songs! It's in the Songs! BBC Four On 14 February 1994, Potter experienced more than his usual daily pain. He was told he was suffering from incurable pancreas and liver cancer. [49] Mark Lawson (18 September 2011). "Obituary: Dennis Potter". The Independent . Retrieved 26 January 2021.Potter's career as a television playwright began with The Confidence Course ( The Wednesday Play, 1965) which Potter had begun as a novel. [10] An exposé of the Dale Carnegie Institute, it drew threats of litigation from that organisation. [11] [12] Although Potter effectively disowned the play, excluding it from his Who's Who entry, [13] it used non-naturalistic dramatic devices (in this case breaking the fourth wall) which would become hallmarks of Potter's subsequent work. The Confidence Course script was liked by Wednesday Play script editor Roger Smith who then commissioned Potter to write what became the second Nigel Barton play for the new anthology series. [14] Alice (also 1965), his next transmitted play, chronicled the relationship between Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known by his nom de plume, Lewis Carroll, and his muse Alice Liddell. The play drew complaints from the descendants of Dodgson, and of Macmillan, the publisher, who objected to the way the relationship was depicted. [15] George Baker played Dodgson. Potter's most highly regarded works from this period were the semi-autobiographical plays Stand Up, Nigel Barton! and Vote, Vote, Vote for Nigel Barton, which featured Keith Barron. The former recounts the experience of a miner's son attending Oxford University where he finds himself torn between two worlds, culminating in Barton's participation in a television documentary. This mirrored Potter's participation in Does Class Matter (1958), a television documentary made while Potter was an Oxford undergraduate. [16] The second play features the same character standing as a Labour candidate—his disillusionment with the compromises of electoral politics is based on Potter's own experience. [17] Both plays received praise from critics but aroused considerable tension at the BBC for their potentially incendiary critique of party politics. [17] In his James MacTaggart Memorial Lecture in 1993, Potter recalled how he was asked by "several respected men at the corporation why I wanted to shit on the Queen." [18] First film screenplays [ edit ]