Aspiring writers used to be advised to 'write what you know' and clearly Dennis Potter heard this at his mother's knee and took it to heart. What he knows is the Forest of Dean, as well he might having been born there and it turns up again and again in his work not least in the two mini-series most associated with him, Pennies From Heaven and The Singing Detective. It appears increasingly that Potter is in great danger of being cultified (to coin a term) in a similar way to Hitchcock, two cases in which beyond A Shadow Of A Doubt substance is thin on the ground. There is much to admire in The Singing Detective and if nothing else it offers superior quality both in terms of songwriter - Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hammerstein - and performer - Dick Haymes, Bing Crosby - to Pennies From Heaven and the acting is hard to fault yet it remains a work of set pieces rather than a richly satisfying whole.
Review of The Singing Detective
