VISION ON SOUND EPISODE 78 - TX APRIL 3 2022 - THE SINGING DETECTIVE

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on April 3rd 2022

Dennis Potter is considered by many to be one of the all-time great playwrights who was working in British Television during the twentieth century, and for many fans of his work, his masterpiece if you will, standing alongside such memorable productions as PENNIES FROM HEAVEN, LIPSTICK ON YOUR COLLAR, BLACKEYES, the NIGEL BARTON PLAYS, CASANOVA, BRIMSTONE AND TREACLE, BLUE REMEMBERED HILLS and so many others, as well as the posthumously produced duet of KARAOKE and COLD LAZARUS, was THE SINGING DETECTIVE, the award-winning six-part serial, controversial in its day, first broadcast by the BBC in 1986, an incredible thirty-six years ago.

The serial tells the complex tale of one PHILIP MARLOW (as played by MICHAEL GAMBON), who is a writer of detective fiction stricken by a crippling psoriasis which has isolated him from work, friends and family. He is trapped by his illness into long-term care on an acute hospital ward, where his anger, the daily humiliations his illness brings with it, and bitterness and lack of trust in the motivations of his ex-wife, cause memories of his childhood in the Forest of Dean, hallucinations from his present circumstances, and his attempts to rewrite one of his detective novels, THE SINGING DETECTIVE in his mind, to all combine in a brilliant swirling maelstrom of storytelling which remains as devastatingly original and iconic all these years later. With the memorable use of several of the old remembered “cheap” songs, those songs that “remind us of the tremendous feelings we had when we first heard them”, which are lip-synched in a series of devastating set-pieces, and a multi-layered narrative in which the characters from his past and present, alongside the kind of ciphers who inhabit the typical film noir, start to interact in his fevered imagination, events in both his real life and his childhood start to mingle to create an astonishingly complex series.

My regular co-host SANDY McGREGOR, along with his pal TIM BOURNE (who joined us a few weeks ago to talk about THE PRISONER), got together online to talk about THE SINGING DETECTIVE. So… With our elbows at the ready, our pots of grease on the bedside cabinet, and the winds of villainy blowing a well-remembered tune or three on the breeze, we travel back in time and ask “What’s the story? Who’s the dame…?”

PLEASE NOTE - For Copyright reasons, musical content sometimes has to be removed for the podcast edition. All the spoken word content remains (mostly) as it was in the broadcast version. Hopefully this won't spoil your enjoyment of the show.