Customer Reviews

The Singing Detective (Unabridged text of the television series)

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The Singing Detective may be the best screenplay ever written. I have the video and the original text (including cast) which I obtained thru interlibrary loan and copied. Its richness derives, not only from its excellent production, directing and cast, but also from its similarities to Dennis Potter's own life. Am now looking for the soundtrack: The Other Side of the Singing Detective, BBC CD 708 or ZCN 708 (cassette). email address: hbduck@koyote.com

The Singing Detective is the complete screenplay of a 6 part British TV series of the same name. I've not seen the TV series, but from reading the screenplay, I can tell that it is far more like a Cubist painting by Braque than it is any straightforward telling of a mystery story. If you liked The Usual Suspects and can imagine it as a screenplay, the result would look a lot like The Singing Detective.

The story follows a young man named Philip Marlowe through to his last days in a British hospital. It introduces us to his family, friends, wife through a series of flashbacks and scene shifts which happen chop-a-block throughout the tale. Reading this book, I'm reminded strongly of the protagonist in Vonnegut's Sirens of Titan, who got unstuck in time and is constantly shifted forwards and backwards along his time line for brief periods before he is off to another spot on his time line.

There's a murder, there's robbery, there's connivance, and there is most certainly deceit in this tale. In some sense, it is just a microsm of human foibles, told without any adornment.

At the end, I was glad I read the screenplay, but it made me realize that watching the series is likely to be far more rewarding.

As the Designer responsible for producing the "prop" book to which the protagonist refers throughout the series, I can tell you it existed only as a cover pasted over an unrelated 1940's pulp novel. Extracts from the book, as read by Michael Gambon on screen, formed part of the original scripts written by Dennis Potter, a copy of which I am fortunate to hold. These are well worth the read for the rich visual imagery interwoven with dialogue. If this book exists, I guess it reproduces the same shooting script. If not, that would be a pity.

What we have here is not a novel or a "novelization" but rather, the screenplay for the brilliant BBC Television presentation of "The Singing Detective." If you have never read a screenplay, this may not be the place to begin, for even viewing this work as a multi-part series is challenging (in a good way) to the audience. However, if you are familiar with screenplays or you've seen this magnificent production starring Michael Gambon then you are in for a real treat.

Dennis Potter's story is about an author in a London hospital ward, nearly paralyzed by arthritis and psoriasis. Like Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse-Five: A Novel, Marlow drifts between the present and the past, reality and fantasy. Marlow weaves the elements of his own life with that of the cheap, dime-store detective in his pulp fiction novels. The result is truly extraordinary.

Although currently out of print, copies are available at surprisingly good prices.