Dennis Potter

Oh, and can we can we talk about the writer for a second? Go ahead.

It's Dennis Potter.

So there's an earlier version of this, a miniseries of Pennies from Heaven starring Bob Hoskins, which I'm also very keen to watch now, especially after this.

Dennis Potter wrote one of my favorite Nicholas Rogue films that's on the obscure side called Track 29. and died of pancreatic cancer i believe and had some very dark periods and you're familiar with dennis potter because we have a review i believe it's a patreon review for brimstone and treacle the 1982 version starring sting and joan plowright and that shit's dark uh but but i in my head not being ignorant about what pennies from heaven was about as we started this once i saw dennis potter's name i was like oh This probably isn't going to be happy.

I really like the performances specifically from Steve Martin and Christopher Walken.

The production is amazing.

Well,

he's like Dennis Potter or Alan Bleasdale, where it's like, oh my God, we've got the new, it's raw, it's unflinching, it's the new Bleasdale.

Yeah, I find some of those a bit

like, yeah, they're going...

Mm-hmm.

Um, and the way, I mean, he used a, used to, he used an, uh, a comparison with a British TV series called The Singing Detective, um, by Dennis-

I don't know

... by Dennis Potter.

I think by dramatic works that engage with that idea that the past is, you know, isn't just another country, but is, you know, and so films like, say, you know, The Go-Between, you know, where the L.P. Hartley line comes from.

It seems to me that to accept that that can involve a lot of self-deception, and that's something that we would associate perhaps with authors like even Dennis Potter, if we were talking about television, so that, again, this predates you, the kind of area you want to cover, but there's a terrific play of his called Traitor, with John of Missouri, who, you know, is playing a kind of Kim Philby-type character, well, a mixture of, well, is it Philby, is it Burgess, you know, he's given a different name.

But you get these kind of flashbacks to the character's youth, and what it was like sort of in the you know kind of 20s and 30s and it's presented in this kind of you know golden age and yet at the same time not very nice things actually happen in it and ultimately that's turned into a way of discussing how someone who comes from a privileged background ultimately Starts to move towards communism and radicalism and how that happened.

So it's about how that radicalization can take place Within the ambit of a very secure very wealthy British or English background and so that's sort of fascinating and it's done brilliantly and And it's a TV play that I'd recommend to anyone but and again that has the advantages of being rather than trying to tell that story in a completely realistic way.

second movie right after Nightmare.

Now, the screenplay, they originally hired someone named Dennis Potter to write a draft.

The producer, one of the co-producers was like, this is kind of bizarre.

It's really too much.

I saw it.

I mean, there was a phase, a bit like Dennis Potter, when you had to see everything that certain dramatists did.

So you'd watch every bit of Mike Lee.

I did see it in the past.

and in the late 70s moved to ITV, where he edited and later presented the channel's flagship art series, The South Bank Show.

There, Bragg determinedly swept away the old hierarchy of so-called high and low art, devoting programmes to Paul McCartney, Ingmar Bergman, Barbara Cartland, Lawrence Olivia, the Smiths, Tracey Emin and his old pal Dennis Potter.

who by this time was dying from pancreatic cancer.

In what became one of the series' defining episodes, Potter talked movingly about childhood, religion, politics and his impending death.

And I think doing the bar work and playing in the various bands and things like that while studying English, while sitting under a tree and reading Thomas Hardy or whatever.

Or, as my degree allowed me, studying the lyrics of Bruce Springsteen, looking at Dennis Potter and his controversial writings for the BBC, doing all that kind of stuff, real progressive stuff.

It kind of created a tapestry that started to build my identity, or helped me, I should say, develop my own personal identity from being a student doing my A-levels, getting coached into how to write an essay, to writing a thesis at the end of my first year about Gaza's tears, Italia 90 or whatever, you know, linking Gaza with Nessun Dorma by, you know, with Pavarotti singing and linking them together and kind of just opening my head up.

I think we've got to go to university thinking I need my mind opening.

But then when his brother, who's another MI5 agent, is hospitalised by Michael Palin's character and he's in a neck brace, him and Tom Georgeson come into the room and start singing the song The Three Bells, otherwise known as Jimmy Brown.

Very Dennis Potter.

It's another Dennis Potter reference, surely, where they suddenly break.

I mean, they're not miming.

It goes on far beyond how long you would expect it to go on for.