The Singing Detective [3 Discs]

Director: Jon Amiel

Overview

With the notable exception of Pennies From Heaven, The Singing Detective was the best-known TV miniseries project of the iconoclastic, darkly humored Dennis Potter. A reworking of Potter's first novel Hide and Seek, the six-part series starred Michael Gambon as crime novelist Philip E. Marlow. Suffering from a hellish skin-and-nerve disease called psoriatic arthroparthy (a painful infliction which ultimately killed the real-life Potter), Marlow was confined to a hospital bed, where under the influence of numerous prescription drugs he began to imagine himself as the hard-boiled hero of his latest detective novel. While trying to solve a difficult case, Marlow continually drifted backward in time to his childhood in the Forest of Dean, occasionally bursting into song to express his emotions. As fantasy and reality merged into one, Marlow was forced into a tortuous session of self-analysis and personal discovery. Virtually everyone in the cast was seen in double and triple roles, including nominal leading ladies Alison Steadman and Joanne Whalley (aka Joanne Whalley-Kilmer). The series earned two BAFTA awards (the British equivalent of the Emmys), one for Best Actor to Michael Gambon. After its initial BBC1 run from November 16, to December 21, 1986, The Singing Detective was shown in the United States via public and cable television, where it picked up another award, the prestigious Peabody, in 1989.

Product Details

Release Date:	05/08/2012
UPC:	0883929254446
Original Release:	1986
Rating:	NR
Source:	Bbc Warner
Region Code:	1
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Stereo]
Language:	English
Time:	7:30:00
Sales rank:	24,723

Special Features

Closed Caption; ; Commentary by Director Jon Amiel and Producer Kenneth Trodd; ; "Dennis Potter: Under The Skin" - An exclusive documentary on the life and career of Dennis Potter; ; A rarely seen Interview featuring Dennis Potter's personal recollections of "The Singing Detective"; ; Photo Gallery, "Points of View" Articles, Cast Bios

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Michael Gambon	Philip E. Marlow
Janet Suzman	Nicola
Patrick Malahide	Mark Binney/Mark Finney/Raymond
Alison Steadman	Mrs. Marlow/Lili
Bill Paterson	Dr. Gibbon
Jim Carter	Mr. Marlow
Joanne Whalley	Nurse Mills
David Ryall	Mr. Hall
Gerald Horan	Reginald
Leslie French	Mr. Tomkey
Ron Cook	First Mysterious Man
George Rossi	Second Mysterious Man
Imelda Staunton	Nurse White
Janet Henfrey	Schoolteacher
Lyndon Davies	Philip (age 10)
Charon Bourke	Amanda
Kate McKenzie	Sonia
Niven Boyd	First Soldier
David Thewlis	Second Soldier

Technical Credits

Scene Index

Disc #1 -- The Singing Detective, Episodes 1-3
1. Skin [10:46]
2. Under My Skin [10:26]
3. Grease [14:51]
4. Bones [9:14]
5. Toots [21:29]
6. Credits [1:38]
1. Heat [11:32]
2. Nut House [10:52]
3. Purple Passage [9:13]
4. Might As Well Be Spring [9:39]
5. The Detective [10:59]
6. Credits [15:11]
1. Lovely Days [9:39]
2. The Black Land [11:39]
3. Vamp Till Ready [15:41]
4. Things That Creeps And Crawls [15:50]
5. Thinking Boring [8:30]
6. Credits [1:38]
Disc #2 -- The Singing Detective, Episodes 4-6
1. Clues [11:12]
2. Visiting Time [14:21]
3. All About The Plot [5:40]
4. In The Script [2:58]
5. The Finger Of Suspicion [16:11]
6. Credits [15:22]
1. Pitter Patter [9:36]
2. Visiting Time [14:29]
3. Word Games [12:22]
4. You Always Hurt The One You Love [:24]
5. Night [13:46]
6. Credits [5:58]
1. Who Done It [13:56]
2. Standing On Your Own Two Feet [10:07]
3. Songs On The Stairs [12:48]
4. Blood [16:24]
5. Loose Ends [21:30]
6. Credits [1:37]

Menu

Disc #1 -- The Singing Detective, Episodes 1-3
Play All
Episode Selection
Episode 1: Skin
Episode 2: Heat
Episode 3: Lovely Days
Commentary
Commentary: On/Off
Subtitles
English: On/Off
English: On
English: Off
Disc #2 -- The Singing Detective, Episodes 4-6
Play All
Episode Selection
Episode 4: Clues
Episode 5: Pitter Patter
Episode 6: Who Done It
Commentary
Commentary: On/Off
Subtitles
English: On/Off
English: On
English: Off
Disc #3 -- Singing Detective: Bonus Features
Points Of View
Close Up, Dennis Potter
Photo Gallery
Arena, Dennis Potter
Filmographies

Editorial Reviews

Sometimes impenetrable, often heartbreaking, The Singing Detective (1986) was one of the finest programs ever produced for television (the six-hour BBC miniseries was released theatrically in the United States). It and another British television miniseres, Pennies From Heaven (1978), are considered the masterworks of writer Dennis Potter, who brought his obsessions with the era of the 1930s and '40s to life in Brechtian style, creating characters tortured by their painful pasts and grim presents who often broke, paradoxically, into joyous singing and dancing to the catchy, sunny popular songs of the time. Michael Gambon, delivering a nuanced, acerbic performance, stars as the crime novel writer Philip E. Marlow, suffering from psoriasis so acute that he cannot lift a pen and is confined to a hospital where he nevertheless attempts to mentally work on a screenplay version of his most successful book, "The Singing Detective." Marlow is in such enormous pain, however, that his ruminations become hallucinogenic daydreams, blurring the line between his fictional story, his real-life childhood, his predilection for pop music of the Great Depression and World War II periods, and his hospital stay. The blending of these preoccupations leads to characters from his book wandering into his ward, and events from his novel ending up as memories from his past (or is the other way around?). Like most of Potter's work, The Singing Detective is semi-autobiographical (it is also a loose reworking of his first novel, 1973's Hide and Seek). Like Marlow, Potter suffered from acute psoriasis that left him occasionally isolated and unable to work, or to even lift a pen. It seems little coincidence, then, that Potter's fictional counterparts were often miserably confined in some way or secluded from society. Potter is never quite that easy to understand, though: his isolated heroes are also manifestations of the writer's recurring, larger theme of man bound by the decaying physical, but soaring in his mind and spirit, through song and dance, verbal badinage, or the imagination. Though the complexity of the story's elliptical structure and its alternately cynical and sentimental tone would have perplexed many directors, Jon Amiel mastered Potter's material, rendering a work of real depth and lack of pandering, something rarely found on any screen, large or small.