Customer Reviews

Dennis Potter: A Biography

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Dennis Potter wrote remarkable things about ordinary people. He may be best remembered for his musical trilogy covering the '30s ("Pennies From Heaven"), '40's ("The Singing Detective"), and the '50s ("Lipstick On Your Collar") employing the device of using popular music to express the hidden thoughts of his characters ... and not new, emotion-charged renditions of the music of those times mind you, but actual phonograph records of the original British artists. Can there be more pathos than bedraggled Arthur Parker in "Pennies From Heaven" lip-synching the bright romantic tune "Roll Along Prairie Moon" ... or more horror than Philip Marlow in "The Singing Detective" witnessing nurses and doctors performing a big production number around the novelty song "Dry Bones", convinced that his illness is making him lose his mind? This biography is a treasure for Potter enthusiasts, going a long distance explaining the root cause of his innovative genius. I personally was thrilled to see that there is a link between Potter and American author Alice Hoffman (hint: it's revealed toward the end of the book -- but no fair using the index!).

Without question, Dennis Potter changed the way we think about TV drama. Or, at least he did in the UK. In the US, his work has had very little exposure. The bio is fair, and explains a lot of Potter's obsessions (they all became material for his work, which is a deconstructionist's paradise). A little repetitive in places, Carpenter gives us a non-hagiographical overview of the guy behind the twisted visions.

Ken Trodd, like Potter a "scholarship boy" at Oxford, went on to produce Potter's finest works in a relationship bubbling with catalytic ferment and often boiling or exploding. As Trodd observes (in a probably unpublished review)he personally appears in this biography more often than DP's wife,mother,or agent, but his relevant insights, like his essential role in DPs creativity, are not apparent. Carpenter was not given to hack P.R jobs! Whyever did he agree to an "authorized" (i.e. supervised and censored) biography?