The Singing Detective (1986)

Excerpts from 1986 BBC feedback programmes with viewers' comments on the Singing Detective episodes

Reflecting on the life and work of Dennis Potter, the playwright and screenwriter, who drew on his own emotional fixations to invest his work with powerful themes and imagery.

1987 Arena episode excerpts relevant to the Singing Detective, where Alan Yentob interviews TV dramatist Dennis Potter about his work through the years

Alison Steadman looks back at Dennis Potter’s The Singing Detective, hailed as one of the most important and influential TV dramas ever made, and once described by Stephen King as ‘television’s Citizen Kane’.  From memories of happy times working with leading man Michael Gambon, and the pride of being involved in a piece that got the whole nation talking, to the stresses of being caught up in the controversy surrounding her character’s notorious outdoor sex scene, Alison brings her unique perspective to a series she ranks amongst her favourites.

Pulp thriller writer Philip Marlow is in hospital with the skin complaint psoriasis, tormented by his past and threatened by his future. His memories, his 1930s-style gumshoe fiction and his disease weave him an altered reality.

Dennis Potter's drama about a patient struggling to keep his sanity, with the help of his alter ego, the singing private eye. Marlow faces a talking cure with a psychologist.

While in hospital with psoriasis, Marlow thinks back to the war when he was a little boy, and remembers seeing his mother having illicit sex in the Forest of Dean. His memories, his 30s style gumshoe fiction and his disease weave him an altered reality.

Marlow as a child visits London, but is not impressed. A film option on Marlow's novel thickens the plot. His memories, his 30s style gumshoe fiction and his disease weave him an altered reality.

Marlow is getting better and the different strands of his fiction and reality begin to occupy the same time and place.

The young Philip Marlow returns to the country railway station following his mother's death in London. Forty years on, Marlow the hospital patient still dreams about the homecoming and the frightening figure of the scarecrow that now erupts into the ward.