Singing Detective - Complete Series (1986)

This review is about the 3 disc BBC TV mini series. not the mel gibson movie. The Singing Detective (3-Disc Series) (1986) I had never heard of Dennis Potter till recently. I saw Pennies from Heaven again -one of my long time favorite movies. I saw Von Triers Dancer Dancer in the Dark recently. I wonder if he was influenced by this set of TV drama-musical by Potter and John Amiel?? The Singing Detective is a critically acclaimed BBC television serial, written by Dennis Potter, starring Michael Gambon. Jon Amiel directed. The episodes were "Skin", "Heat", "Lovely Days", "Clues", "Pitter Patter", and "Who Done It". The story revolves around mystery writer Philip E. Marlow and his most recent hospital stay. Having reached its peak, his psoriatic arthropathy (a chronic skin and joint disease) forms lesions and sores covering his entire body, and partially cripples his hands and feet. Dennis Potter suffered from this disease himself, and wrote with a pen tied to his fist much in the same fashion Marlow does in the last episode. Although severe, Marlow's case was intentionally understated compared to Potter's real case: Potter's skin would sometimes crack and bleed.As a result of constant pain, a fever caused by the condition, and his refusal to take medication, Marlow falls into a fantasy world involving his Chandleresque novel, The Singing Detective, an escapist adventure about a detective (also named "Philip Marlow") who sings at a dance hall and takes the jobs "the guys who don't sing" won't take. The real Marlow also experiences flashbacks to his childhood in rural England, and his mother's suicide in wartime London. The rural location is presumably the Forest of Dean, Potter's birthplace and the location for filming, but this is never stated explicitly. The death of his mother is one of several recurring images in the series; Marlow uses it (whether subconsciously or not) in his murder mystery, and sometimes replaces her face with different women in his life, real and imaginary. The noir mystery, however, is never actually solved; all that is ultimately revealed is an intentionally vague plot involving smuggled Nazi war criminals and Soviet agents attempting to stop them. This perhaps reflects Marlow's view that fiction should be "all clues and no solutions." 'The Singing Detective' is an offbeat musical about a writer in hospital, that weaves effortlessly his present experiences, his past fictions, his paranoid imaginings and, above all else, the memories of a childhood that to this day still dominates his life. Wildly imaginative, but grounded in Potter's own autobiography, it constitutes an enormously rich and vivid telling of a fundamentally very simple story. Potter celebrates life, but refuses to assign it any false dignity. The extent to which he strips away the cant that helps make life bearable is truly disturbing, and perhaps explains the reason the religious right wanted it banned. The cover of my DVD says 'moderate nudity; mild language; no violence' and by modern standards this is correct. Which only damns the moderns; but Potter knew truly how to shock.This is one of the strangest most unique pieces of film I have ever seen. Five stars