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, ~"^ million. The initial reactions from television critics varied from enthusi 13 The Singing Detective (Dennis Potter) (^) astically cautious to the totally engaged. 'Y ou didn't know where you were
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)005T HUNNINGHER
Dennis Potter dislikes academic critics. In the preface to Waiting for the Boat: On Television, he wrote: 'It is no news that there is a contemptuous, hard-eyed hatred ofhumanistic culture all around us ... the long, grey, ebb tide of so-named Post-Modernism, pseudo-totalitarian, illiberal and dehumanizing theories and practices lie on top of the cold waters like a huge and especially filthy oil slick ... The Academic critic reigns, intimidat ingly.' Understandably, I tread cautiously over this bridge shrouded in fog except for an overall hunch, no, conviction, that I should declare now. The Singing Detective, expressly conceived for a television mini-series in 1986, is a vision of life, family, love, illness, art and sex that in its form provocatively challenges and uses television and film conventions, and realises in production terms a dazzling and sensitive crea ti ve collaboration. This is not to suggest that this process, which lasted well over ayear, did not have its share of tensions, insecurity, arguments and, in thriller terms, back-stabbing. Nonetheless, the series reveals a rich process started by the skill and vision of Potter which interacted with the creativity of a production team and an ensemble of actors to produce a unique series which must be the most original British television drama of the decade. My aim is to investigate aspects of this process and find clues as to why The Singing Detective is such an inspiring work.
The body
At 9.0 p.m. on 16 November 1986,8.12 million people turned to BBCl to watch 'Skin', the first 75-minute episode of The Singing Detective. Philip Marlow's 7-hour odyssey had begun and continued its powerful emotional unravelling for six weeks, ending on 21 December with an audience of 6
with Dennis Potter's The Singing Detective: and it made it all the more exciting.'2 'Still, this is not the week to linger over the down side of television, for it was the week that launched Dennis Potter's first new work for the BBC for eight years, The Singing Detective - an effort as remarkable as most telly presenters are unremarkable. It has been worth the wait.' ' ... reserve the following five Sundays as well. That way you will be sure to see every moment of The Singing Detective, probably the most compelling piece of original television fiction that I have seen in 16 years as a critiC.' What did the audience and these critics react to? Piecing together the construction of the opening episode which starts the manipulation of the multi-layered odyssey of the main character - Philip Marlow - we see how Potter introduces the themes, images and motifs that are to reveal Marlow to us and to himself. The ingredients seem familiar enough: 'a misty, moody, atmospheric, "thrillerish" winter's evening in London, 1945'; we see a labyrinth of dissolving wet alleyways and pavements, 'a pathetic old busker is playing an achingly melancholy "Peg O' My Heart" on his mouth organ', the well-dressed Binney wearing a trilby and wrapped in an overcoat appears down the 'misty paving stones'; the busker inserts a bar of 'Deutschland über Alles', a coin and a message are exchanged: what is this - treachery? So far the cluster of film noir images seems as familiar as Harry Lime, 'but anyone beguiled into settling down to enjoya piece of pleasantly stylish pastiche was to be sharply shaken up'. ~ Binney descends into the Skinscape Club, a side-of-the-mouth voice-over, 'it was a rat-hole ... loto the rat-hole. Down, down, down. And the one thing you don't do when you find yourself in one of those is to underestimate the rats in residence _'. Suddenly we are in a daytime hospital in a skin-and-cardiac ward - the music changes to '1 have you under my skin'. Mr Hall moans to Reginald about the tea trolley. Reginald pays little attention - he is reading what we later discover to be a copy of The Singing Detective. The central character Philip Marlow is being wheeled back to his bed. 'Marlow is glowering morosely, crumpled into himself, and his face badly disfigured with a ragingly acute psoriasis, which looks as though boiling oil has been thrown over him. '7 The pain is underlined by the black porter who takes Marlow's smock off, 'hoo, man, razz', he stares at Marlow's 'cracked, scabbed, scaled, swollen scarlet and snowy skin'. Marlow is a writer, we have guessed this with his voice-over: 'No, sir. The way those creatures gnaw and nibble can do a lot of damage to your nerves full stop new paragraph .. .' Cut. Disorienting tilted film-noir shots as 'Binney, now appearing to be a nervous and hesitant businessman not certain that he is going to have a
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good time, or even that he should' descends into the Skinscape bar. Back to reality, and the hospital, as Marlow in his wheelchair composes the story. BARMAN (voice over): G'evening, sir. What is your poison? What'1I it be, sir? Ouch-h-! Marlow, jolted by a bump on the chair as it trundles along the corridor, winces with pain. MARLOW (fa himself, hiss): Concentrate. Concentrate ... The bar at Skinsrape's reasserts its occupation of the screen ... Binney looks from si de to si de, along the empty stools, and empty spaces which fade off into arches of near darkness. BINNEY: Well. Company for a start."
A big close-up of a bell being pressed and suddenly Amanda, a young hostess in sailor's suit, is sitting next to him. AMANDA: Helio, sugar. BINNEY: Helio yourself. Sugar. Would you like a AMANDA: Champagne, toots. BINNEY: Yeso Ah. Of course. Toots!
And so we get clues that Potter is exploring, as in Doub/e Dare, the relation between the writer and his creation. Marlow imagines and creates and 'imitates exactly what he mostly cannot possibly have heard'. 10 He is an unlovable, churlish detective writer who, helpless and paralysed by psoriasis, can only escape into the interior landscape ofhis imagination. As Potter says, 'That's the way you have to deal with physical pain, you know. You have to sort of stand outside it and say, "OK destroy me ifyou must, but 1am going somewhere else." '11 Marlow, left alone, hums, Tve got you under my skin', we dissolve to Hammersmith Bridge, a medium close-up of a naked drowned woman as she is pulled from the Thames, Amanda's voice-over says, 'A girl's got to live hasn't she?' On the bridge 'there is but one person, there now, in a trilby, his coat collar turned up, distantly lonely like the man in the old cigarette advertisement. ("You're1J.ever alone with a ... ") It is Marlow, 1945-style, without psoriasis or seized joints. He is watching the recovery ofthe body with a burning intensity of expression.' 12 Throughout the series, again and again, dead, naked female bodies are pulled from the river. Are they new bodies or repeated memories? The labyrinthine story continues with parallel threads of images that smartly and wryly keep us guessing. Is this a Chandleresque thriller, a psycho logical drama, a hospital soap? Whatever it is, we are hooked as Potter 'swings with seeming effortlessness through time and space, carrying us repeatedly ... into the condition of a drama, where action and reaction, normal chronology and the shared assumptions of existence, dissolve. Visually everything remains sharp and clear, but a new internal logic
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dictates the way that the obsessive images come and gO.'IJ Back in the hospital, Marlow's relationship with Ali, the cardiac patient in the next bed, is affectionately offensive, Alf-Garnett style. MARLOW: That's you cardiacs. You heart patients, nig-nog. I'm skin, Ali. Skin! Ali lights Marlow's electronic lighter, the flame shoots out. MARLOW 1 could see the headlines. 'Another Asian Burnt to Death.' The sexual tension first established in Skinscape is now transferred to the angelic nurse MilIs who comes to relieve Marlow's pain by greasing him. The curtains are drawn and erotic polythene gloves massage Marlow's thighs in big close-ups. Marlow's face fills the screeen with intense concentration ... MAR LOW (voice over): Think of something boring - For Christ's sake think of something very very boring - Speech a speech by Ted Heath a sentence long sentence from Bernard Levin a quiz by Christopher Booker a - oh think think think! - Really boring! A Welsh male-voice choir - Everything in Punch - Oh! Oh!" Nurse MilIs is suddenly in the Skinscape Club as a singer crooning 'Blues in the Night'. Her singing and the massaging build and when she finally says in her role as the club singer, 'Sorry. But 1shall have to lift your penis now to grease around it', all the paunchy middle-age men in Skinscape cheer and bang their palms on the tables as Marlow ejaculates into nurse MilIs' plastic glove. MARLOW (off): I'm - ah - nurse. I'm very sorry. It - that's the one part ofme that still soft of functions. 1 do beg your pardon. 16 Cut to the Skinscape Club, Binney discovers the busker from the opening sequence murdered and hanging in a cupboard. Lights ofa train approach through a tunnel- a woman's voice yells, 'Philip, Philip.' Suddenly with a dynamic fast-moving camera track, the hospital consultants arrive - they hardly hear Marlow's agony, 'God! Talk about the Book of - the Book of Job - I'm a prisoner inside my oooh own skin and bones' - and just as suddenly the consultants burst into Fred Waring's Pennsylvanians' musical number 'Dry Bones'. The number 'transforms the oppressive hospital ward into a hallucinating night club with high-kicking nurses and bossy doctors made into chorus boys'. 17 Big tilted close-ups of Marlow convey his disorientation. Again the train approaches through a tunnel and the consultants' entourage sweeps away. Big close-up of Marlow. On sound track we hear Marlow's father, Mr Marlow. MR MARLOW (voice over): Philip! Phi!! Philip! Where bist? Philip - Why doesn't thee answerT
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\ (^) blockages (retardations and digressions) are useful not only in sustaining
dramatic interest: they mirror MarIow's resistance to analysis and self-insight. ' Potter deliberately avoids the narrative clarity of a chain of events in a cause-and-effect relationship set in chronological order. Yet ifwe step back from dazzling dramatic and technical innovations in The Singing Detective, there is a clear journey. We start with aman who is paralysed, whose body is out of control, who believes in nothing and who, after probing all the elements of his life in seven hours of television time, walks from the hospital having overcome his physical adversities and having found a way through his emotionallabyrinth. The illness incites the crisis and starts the complex causal conflicts within MarIow. As Potter said on Arena, 'It is the illness which is the crisis. It is the illness which has stripped him ... in dramatic terms it needed exactIy that - that starting point of extreme crisis and no belief.' Throughout the exploration of MarIow's complicated realities and fantasies, 'we alway[s] return to one point of contact,' Potter says, 'the man in a hospital bed ... That's what it is really all about.'
The syndicate In earIy 1979 Potter and producer Kenith Trodd had a two-year contract with London Weekend Television to produce six television plays. When the director of programmes, Michael Grade, announced in July 1980 that, after having produced three plays, LWT would not proceed with the arrange ment because of 'insurmountable difficulties' and 'generous budgets being heavily overspent',32 Potter hit back in an article in the Daily Mail entitIed, 'Why British TV is going to the dogs: and I'm going to California'. 33 Potter did go to California to work on rewrites ofhis script Penniesfrom Heaven for Herbert Ross's film version, released by It1GM in 1982. There, other sorts of barriers were up. 'When I was working at MGM in Hollywood I realised that the studio based all narrative forms entirely upon category. At the beginning of a project they would ask what particular bag it was in. Was it a detective story? Was it a musical? Was it a romance? They saw it as a marketing problem, even before the first shot,' says Potter. 'That sort of thinking throws a terrible carapace over the writer and one of the things I want to do in The Singing Detective is break up the narrative tyranny.' Potter has long argued for plays that challenge the viewer's passive consumption of naturalistic television drama. In 1984 he wrote, 'Most television ends up offering its viewers a means of orientating themselves towards the generally received notions of "reality" - that is, the way things are, which is more or less the way things have to be. There is not rnuch space
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left for what it is that "Art" can do. '3~ Insisting on the artificiality of the television play - 'that a play is a play is a play' - hisdeclared airn is to stimulate and thus 'to disorientate the viewer', to break out of 'the prevailing, .unexamined "naturalisrn" ofthe mediurn as a whole ... [which] continually works against the alert attention which any writer wants to evoke in ... his audience'.36 As earIy as 1965 he assauIted the naturalistic rnode with schoolchildren played by grown-ups in Stand Up Nigel Barton,r device which he repeated in Blue Remembered Hills (1979). In Penniesfrom Heaven (1978), as in The Singing Detective (1986), he threw characters, without warning, into miming songs of original thirties and forties recordings which comment, ironically or ambiguously, even syrnpathetic ally, on the dramatic moment. In The Singing Detective Potter uses a growing arsenal of non naturalistic devices - a range of provocatively integrated stylistic conven tions, a range of acting styles and even sorne actors playing muItiple roles, cross-cutting and flash-backs to rnoments of rnemory, actuality and fantasy, dancing and singing, etc. 'The advantage of this drarnaturgic technique is to energise the viewer - heJshe has to put in sorne effort in order to follow the story.'37 It is 'creative participation by the audience - they cease to be just spectators "consurning" but are asked to question that very process of consurning by the entertainrnent of the spectacle itselr.^38 Jon Arniel says, The script is written with dazzling confidence and certainty and an extraordinary feel for the power of the cut. Dennis understands how to juxtapose scenes in a way that gives a tremendous sinewy energy to the story. Many writers put in a lot of camera directions, extreme c.u. or cut to w.S Dennis never does that, there are never any camera directions at aH. However when a c1ose-up is necessary he will describe an event in such detail that the only conceivable way to match the intensity of that description is with a c1ose-up.
Referring to the tea scene with the mother and the Gran in the second episode, Arniel gives an exarnple frorn the shooting script:
'Swot! a gobbet of spit hits the grate and sizzles.' It both graphicaHy describes the smeH and event and sound and you have to find a visual way ofmatching it. ... So what Dennis's writing does, rather than insist on or direct you to do something, is to inspire you to do something with the same passion and same specificity. That's what's so remarkable about his script.^39
The contract Kenith Trodd is the prolific producer whose first Potter production was Moonlight on the Highway (1968) and who then produced rnost of his television plays up to The Singing Detective. He told me that Penniesfrom
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Heaven was a c1ever mixture of video tape and film, whíle The Singing Detective ís aIl film and that was one of the bíg dífrerences ín crea tí ve taste between 1976 and 1986.
By 1986, I would not have been able to get a director who was willing to work on a hybrid, even on a play by Dennis Potter. In 1976, it was the norrn. Dennis by 1986 had not caught up to changing norrns, because he had expected, and indeed wrote, aH the hospital scenes, expecting them to be made in the television studio. He wanted to go on the prototypes of the sitcom for those scenes and expected the rest in film. 4 •
Trodd had always wanted to shoot on film and he remembers saying to Potter that ít was necessary because he couldn't find a good enough director. Trodd feels that dírectors like Píers Haggard, who in 1976 dírected Pennies from Heaven and could successfuIly íntegrate studio vídeo and location film work, had become in the 1980s almost an 'extinct breed'. He told me that The Singing Detective was turned down by
the cream ofthe British film industry, such as it was, Stephen Frears, Richard Eyre, Malcolm Mowbray, Pat O'Connor - nearly aH on the basis that they couldn't interrupt their movie careers to do a Dennis Potter sitcom. So I got tumed down by al! these names and I then had to start looking, as I've often done, for less tried talents ... Amiel had brought me one or two projects ... but not very mucho He'd been a script editor: and unlike sorne directors, he had an attitude towards the script as weH as to the visual realisation ... I thought ... it's probably Jon, and I took a chance ... not knowing if he was going to live up to the job or not ... it was a gamble.^41
Jon Amíel told me he was surprísed to get the jobo
I know that the script was offered to five or six people who were more eligible or more distinguished than I was at the time. So Ken Trodd first carne in and asked me to read the scripts and said, 'l1's not an offer, there are other people, but have a look and see what you think.' I remember c1early reading these scripts, and by the time I was half-way through the first script my hands were shaking as I was tuming the pages. I knew for an absolute certainty, because aH of my training had been basical!y in script development [he had been a literary manager in the theatre and a story editor in television], that I was reading a masterpiece. The thought of directing this thing fiHed me with complete terror and the thought of not being asked to direct it fil!ed me with as much terror. After having read the six episodes, I went to Ken Trodd, and in a surprisingly calm voice I said, 'Look, I think they are wonderfuI. I think it is a masterpiece, but I think A,B,C,D - aH of this work needs doing on the scripts. The sixth episode is not the sum of the five previous ones, the singing detective story needs sorne detailed work on it, the relationship with Nicola needs looking at-and so on' ... I couldn't believe that I was reaHy saying these things. But the five more distinguished directors had aH tumed it down and the project evolved to me. And this is often the way things happen. Most people get their breaks that particular way.
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After Amiel was appoínted to dírect ín September, he had a seríes of meetíngs with Potter. The first two were exceedingly dífficult. Amíel felt ínsecure but 'floundered on'. Then at theír third meeting both men seemed to put asíde any misgívíngs and launched into a 'truly joyful' coIlaboratíon. They had síx further meetíngs before Amíel receíved a telephone caIl from Potter sayíng he was goíng to rewrite aIl the scrípts right from the begínníng. The pre-productíon schedule was very tíght (two and half months) and Amíel remembers sayíng, 'Dennis hold on, not the whole script!' Potter ínsísted and then,
while under attack from this awful disease psoriasis, he launched into one of the most extraordinary processes I've ever witnessed, he rewrote one episode a week for six weeks. He wrote with the most astonishing and unerring editing instinct I have ever come across in a writer - he rejigged, rebalanced the whole thing and after that even went back to rewrite the sixth episode again.
Amíel found that the more he worked on rewritten scripts the more confident he feIt about the productíon. As he told me, 'my convíctíon that 1 was workíng on a masterpíece only grew'.
Further enquiries Designs In The Singing Detective the expressíve resources of film - decor, costume, make-up, vísuaIísation, líghtíng, camera and edítíng rhythms, sound, musíc, actíng - were used very creatívely to realise the scrípt and to enhance characters, emotíons and the sígníficance of each scene. Consíderable crea tí ve contributíons and coIlaborations are necessary to achieve such a uníty. Besídes ínterviewíng the producer and director, I díscussed thís process wíth the desígner, Jim Clay, and the make-up desígner, Frances Hannon. Jím Clay told me that 'makíng The Singing Detective was a wonderfuIly uninhíbited process'; there was total creatíve freedom with very líttle ínterference from management. After long díscussíons with Jon Amíel about characters, plots and sub-plots, set desígns evolved and models were buílt. 'Jon's precísion ís a treasure. He ís hard work, but you don't mínd ít, because he's always pushíng you a bít further.' Each set developed a great deal: Amíel never just accepted the first one ofrered - but thís always led to better solutíons, Clay says. 'For example, ít took a long tíme to evolve the "Dry Bones" sequence. Dennís had written ít ín a black voíd wíth skeleton costumes ... whích we thought was terríbly old-fashioned - so we wanted to use sorne hospital elements and struggled for a long tíme to find a solutíon for transformíng the hospital ínto a dance sequence.'44 He
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that each scene had to hit hard, had to say, what's the essence ofthis scene, ~ (^) what is the emotional centre of it, what does it want to deliver? Then focus
everything in delivering that moment as vividly, powerfulIy and truthfulIy as I could.'~o On the whole, Potter did not get very involved in the production process. He carne to the set only a few times and after seeing the rushes on tape would talk to Amiel every four or five days. Amiel took this as a remarkable sign of Potter's confidence in his direction of the script.
Cover-up
In The Singing Detective, getting under a character's skin starts with what was put on it. The outer casing of the characters provides clues about the different time periods, the stylistic leaps and the various multiple echoing roles that sorne actors play. The artistic contribution and skilI of a department like Make-Up is of considerable importance. For example, Marlow's physical surface in the hospital appears as painful as the turmoil we discover underneath it. As John Wyver reported in The Listener, 'rhe dominant, almost overwhelming image of the film is of Marlow in a hospital bed, his outer layers scraped away, with raw, exposed tissue fighting across his face and body and the peeling areas of parched, translucent, dead skin. 'JI Frances Hannon, the make-up designer, told me, 'If you didn't have make-up (^) in The Singing Detective it couldn't have worked ... there would be no progression ... Make-up is a very good indicator of things
happening that people may not lock into but read subconsciously.'~
Before The Singing Detective, Hannon hadn't done 'anything of great standing', but Ken Trodd started sending her scripts as early as six months before the start of production. The greatest challenge for Hannon was the make-up for Marlow in hospital. Believing that make-up should be 'as real as possible', she began by researching the characteristics of psoriasis. She saw the top medical consultants in England and Wales plus a variety of drug companies who were all very helpful, showing her patients, slides and records. She told me that there are hundreds of forms of psoriasis and that, after looking at different forms, she and Jon Amiel agreed that Marlow's form should be arthritic psoriasis - physicalIy the type of psoriatic symptoms that Dennis Potter had suffered from in the sixties until medical advances improved the control of the disease. 'Once I knew what it had to look like, it took me a long time to find out how to make it work. I had to find something which anyone's skin could take every day and not with an allergic reaction... It was a creative process of
elimination.'~3 In the end Hannon designed a complicated 'recipe' for
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Michael Gambon. She started with a water-based spray to seal the skin and then used six different colours to shade it; that was covered with petroleum jelIy, talced, then painted again, sealed, plastics were added to give a three-dimensional look, and she used further sealers and then finished the surface with hot gelatin to give it a crusty finish. The process would take four hours to complete, and Hannon and the make-up team would start on Michael Gambon's make-up at 6.0 a.m. to be ready by 10. a.m.
The rnake-up had to be filrned in the first four hours of the day ... beca use after sorne time, due to the heat ofthe lights and Michael's varying body temperature, the gelatin would not stay hard and crusty, and [would] go soft. We used air conditioning units around the bed to try to keep the temperature down and took them away just before each take.
Michael Gambon's acting technique added to the heat problem.
Michael has a very expressive and mobile mouth, and with aH that shouting and screarning he did, the scabs would be hanging off his rnouth at the end of each take. We'd al! rush in to repair the make-up. The make-up had its time limit ... Michael Gambon was frequently uncomfortable, but too k it al! in his stride.·^4
Hannon had plotted the cure element, so that Marlow's skin condition improved over the six episodes. Despite shooting out of sequence, it was scheduled to minimise intermixing Marlow with severe psoriasis and mild psoriasis and as the singing detective. She said that artistic colIaboration went on continuously 'and we needed only one meeting in the beginning to know ifwe were alI on the same wavelength'. With Amiel encouraging and co-ordinating decisions, the various departments evolved close working relationships 'to achieve the same mood and look'.~~ For example, Hannon's colIaboration with Ken Westbury, the cameraman, was import ant. Every night Westbury would describe the Iighting for the folIowingday and leave a set of the same Iighting gels that were being used on the scene. Hannon then lit the make-up room with these gels, so that she could see how the filtered lights would affect her make-up designo 'In hadn't had this information, Ken could completely destroy my work ifhe used, let's say, a red light instead of a blue one.' Having agreed on the severity of the make-up on Marlow after sorne film tests on Gambon, Hannon told me that Amiel had second thoughts. 'rhe night before we started shooting, we were in the hospital in Tottenham [where the ward sequences were shot] and Jon carne up to me and said did I think we should take Marlow's psoriasis down slightly. I think he suddenly had the fear that the audience would be so revolted by the make-up that they wouldn't even look in.'~ Hannon agreed that slightly les s would be enough.
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'----- (^) Musical stings
A headline in The Sun wittily stressed the musical elements of The Singing Detective with 'Marlow's Singing in the Pain'. ~7 As in Penniesfrom Heaven, the songs 'distract, tickle, upset', ~8 but now they do more than provide an ironic counterpoint to the dramatic action: all relate to the young Marlow's 'troubled childhood' when he heard them 'drifting up the stairs from the crackling wireless'~9 and thus 'connect and underline' different narrative strands in the work. When, for example, Mr Hall and Noddy mime the words to the Mills Brothers' 'You Always Hurt the One You Love', the associations in Marlow's head lead from memories of a shallow experience with a prostitute, to the working-men's club where his father and Binney (with Mrs Marlow on the piano) are singing the same song, then to the woods where Mrs Marlow is^ in tears after her adultery with Binney, to Mrs Marlow on Hammersmith Bridge and finally to her naked body pulled from the Thames. The Mills Brothers' song is ironic in its jazzy harmonies, ! deadly accurate in its 'trite sentiments',~9 and it also effectively binds the narratives. Even the songs that are not mimed have thematic significance and reveal dramatic contrast. After climbing to the top of his tree in the Forest of Dean, the young Marlow says the Lord's Prayer and on the sound-track Bing Crosby croons 'Don't Fence Me In'. As the camera sweeps back from the forest, we cut to a radio in Gran's house where Bing's song continues and, in contrast to the boy's vision of freedom, we see Mrs Marlow imprisoned by the domestic and social conventions of matrimony. 'Putt thik racket, om' instructs Gran. In the final episode, Potter uses the lines from 'The Teddy Bears' Picnic' 'Ifyou go out in the woods today, you'd better not go alone, It's lovely out in the woods today, but better to stay at home' - as a moment of Marlow's self-recognition. The song binds his memories and fantasies - the fictional detective singing, the mother and Binney on the ground, the young Marlow running away, the loneliness of the father, the hospital experience - and it finally releases 'all of Marlow's fatal traumas ... The lyric's power is therapeutic enough to lift the arthritic Marlow to his feet.'60 Amazed, he stumbles forward and calls out, 'Look, I did it! I walked! I can walk!' Since the nineteen songs dominate stylistically, Amiel was at first unsure about what music to use for the title theme and dramatic transitions. Eventually he decided that since Potter was playing with derivative styles, he should echo it and turn to an effects disc library. He 'got in over fifty albums of these weird generic titles with short pieces called something like "shock blood corridor" or "stirring chilly crescendo ending in a tympani
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climax" ... [he] carne up with about forty different bits of totally generic music, which was cut together'. 61 The stings and transitions were assembled into a compelling soundtrack which, as in the title sequence, draws the viewer in and underlines the suspense of the investigation.
Casting accomplices In their themes and explorations, other Potter films, such as Secret Friends and Blackeyes, explore sorne ofthe same territory as The Singing Detective, but in emotional terms none achieves the depth of character sustained by Amiel's cast. I was intrigued to find out how Amiel chose and prepared actors. He gave me sorne clues. '1 didn't find the casting difficult. I found I was like a kid in a sweet-shop, because suddenly I had these absolutely wonderful roles that I could take to actors whom I had admired for many years and finally say, here is a role worthy of you, Bill Paterson, Alison Steadman, Ron Cooke, Michael Gambon. '62 Amiel relied on instinct, often casting an actor for a very large role 'simply on the basis of a 20-minute conversation'. Sornetimes he had a specific idea, 'but many times casting would actually surprise me'. He gave me an example: '1 had no idea what the father should look like, but at the time I was casting for the second of the mysterious men, I had already cast little Ron Cook for the first one, I knew I wanted someone either very tall or fat to play the other one - I wanted them to be a complete odd couple. Michele Guish, a casting director, had said there is this marvellously funny guy who is 6 ft 4 inches tall and was in Guys and Dolls playing Big Julie, and in carne Jim Carter for the role ofthe second mysterious man.' Amiel talked to Jim for about 15 minutes: '1 listened to his lovely sad brown voice ... his big earlobes made him look tremendously vulnerable and gentle.' He remembers watching him walk away down the corridor 'with this slightly stooping walk that rather tall men have and feeling an odd mixture of sadness and tenderness and knowing that this was the feeling that I wanted the father to evoke. I had not been able to visualise the father until Jim walked in. ' Amiel believes in the importance of rehearsals with actors before shooting. Many producers balance slipping schedules and financial problems by cutting rehearsal periods. Amiel pushed hard for extra rehearsal time and Kenith Trodd gave it to him. The series was in production for five and half months. Amiel had two weeks of rehearsal at the beginning and a further two in the middle.
In rehearsal period, I used to allow the characters [the actorsl to explore the relationship with each other so that a feeling of familiarity that you get within
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scene where the dour Gran (Maggie Holland) goes on about a 'Iovely bit o' plum' while Grancher (Richard Butler) emphatically spits into the grate has us on the verge of retching with Mrs Marlow. She explodes about 'being squashed up in this poky hole' and accuses her husband ofnot being 'any sort of aman'. (Philip's vulnerable Dad is not the man to stand up to his mother and wife.) Mrs Marlow's escape from this misery is into the woods with Binney. Alison Steadman's portrait merges with the Lili Marlene character in the fictional story and transfers to the sexual film noir motif ofthe women's naked bodies being pulled from the river (the mother, Russian Sonia and Nicola are all echoed in that recurring image). A key role in freeing Marlow's helpless but fertile mind is that of Dr Gibbon, the psychiatrist, cunningly played by Bill Paterson. Dr Gibbon sees that Marlow has a psychosomatic illness caused by repression of painful childhood memories - that his psychological development is reflected in his illness, his writing and his relationship with Nicola and other people. Eventually through the probing and goading of Dr Gibbon, Marlow is able to overcome his paralysis and, in the last episode, he stands for the first time and dances with Dr Gibbon. Potter undercuts the dramatic impact ofthe moment with an ironic musical number as the two men mime to Ella Fitzgerald and the Inkspots singing, 'Into Each Life Sorne Rain Must Fall'. It is Dr Gibbon who gets Philip, as Nicola says, to 'come down from his tree'. But walking is not enough, psychologically; Marlow still has one score to settle - that is to resolve the struggle between Marlow the writer and Marlow his creation - the Singing Detective. With typical Potterian irony, the creation - the Singing Detective - tops the creator Marlow the writer - with a bullet drilled into the forehead. But these are the heavyweight parts, and in contrast there is much light ! and amusing comedy acting. The mysterious men, played by Ron Cook , and George Rossi, are dressed up to suggest suspense and evil, but in fact add buffoonery to the detective narra ti ve. They are Stoppardian characters looking for roles. As they say in the last episode, 'We're padding. Like a couple of bleed'n sofas',72 'Our roles are unclear ... No names, even. No bloody handles. '73 From the beginning we have known that this team was playing at being gangsters and are as innocently dangerous as Wilmer in The Maltese Falcon. Mr Hall (David Ryall) and Reginald (Gerald Horan) al so continue their endless humorous bickering about tea, bedpans and hospital company. And Reginald, of course, embodies Potter's playful device of reading the book of The Singing Detective, which allows him the opportunity of recapping the events for us at the beginning of 'Pitter Patter', episode 5. The relationship Marlow has with nurse Mills is in contrast to the tormented one he has with Nicola. Nurse Mills is never fished from the Thames. Marlow says to her, 'You are the girl in all those
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songs' - and so she is. Nurse Mills, played by Joanne Whalley, is an uncomplicated, sensuous 'angel of mercy' who delivers mental, physical and sexual comfort. Joanne Whalley's eyes stare down sympathetically at Marlow. She injects a strong life-force into the play. While most of Fleet Street debated the graphic details of the adultery scenes, The Times at least recognised the alluring danger of nurse Mills to male middle-aged viewers. 'Joanne Whalley's eyes ought to carry a Government health warning.' Patrick Malahide plays three characters: Binney the spy in the detective story, Mark Binney who seduces Philip's mother and the modern film producer Finney who steals Marlow's book and wife. We think of him as the slightly pinched evil-hearted catalyst who pushes forward Marlow's real and imagined events. In all three parts, Malahide gives the character the air of predatory treachery suitable for generating injury and neuroses in the young and old Marlow. We never do find out ifhe smuggled Nazis out of Britain. But does it matter? There is another kind of treachery in the frightening authoritarian country-school teacher played by Janet Henfrey. As in Blue Remembered Hills and Stand Up Nigel Barton, Potter shows us 'childhood innocence [as] unspoiled original sin'73 filled with snivelling, hypocrisy, betrayal and guilt. Janet Henfrey echoes a strong performance in Stand Up Nigel Barton and creates an almost religiously fanatical character who will have created traumatic psychic damage in Philip and in generations of her pupils. The cast of The Singing Detective made their own powerful contribution to the play, achieving that invisible seam where the character begins and the actor ends.
Who done in The more I investigate clues as to why The Singing Detective is such an inspiring work, the more I discover 'further surprising revelations' in the
creative j~~ey of making it. The journey certainly seems elliptical, but
that undoubtedly is normal in making any television drama involving sixty or more people. Talent does not drop out of the sky, it is fostered and encouraged. A1though the series was a relatively low-budget production (about f400,OOO per programme), it is not surprising that it was made at the BBC in the mid-eighties when the organisation encouraged confidence in its programme-makers and was comparatively generous in germinating and realising new work. Potter's script mapped the terrain, but the achievement was the locking together of many artistic instincts. So Who Done It? Well, like Poirot in Murder on the Orient Express, I conclude, 'They were all in it ... it was a perfect mosaic, each person playing his or her allocated part. '76 The process
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was a creative collaboration which made us sit up and watch television drama, not as an apology for a mini-movie, but as a creative and powerful dramatic medium. The Singing Detective was inspiring because it showed us the dynamic possibili ti es of television drama. Nancy Banks-Smith in The Guardian summed it up with, 'If the BBC and its Empire lasts another 50 years, men will still say, "This was one of their finest plays."' As Poirot would say, 'Having placed my solution before you, I have the honour to retire from the case.'
The Singing Detective
First episode transmitted on BBCl on 16 November 1986
For cast, technical and production credits, see Dennis Potter, The Singing Detective (London: Faber and Faber, 1986)
Notes
1 Dennis Potter, Waiting for the Boat (London: Faber & Faber, 1984), 26. 2 Hilary Kingsley, Daily Mirror, 17 November 1986, 17. 3 Alan Rusbridger, The Observer, 23 November 1986. 4 Christopher Dunkley, Financia/ Times, 12 November 1986,23. 5 Lucy Hughes-Hallett, London Standard, 17 November 1986. 6 Dennis Potter, The Singing Detective (London: Faber & Faber, 1986),2. The book is not exactly the same as the scripts used during the making ofthe serial: sorne of the events, dialogue and emphases are different. Potter decided to rework the script so that it would read more like a novel. However, the publication is still a useful reference and 1 list page numbers when appropriate. 7 [bid., 3. 8 [bid., 4. 9 [bid., 5. 10 [bid., 6. 11 Dennis Potter, quoted by Richard Corliss, Time, 1 August 1988,42. 12 The Singing Detective, 10. 13 Nicholas Shakespeare, The Times, 22 December 1986. 14 The Singing Detective, 11, 12. 15 [bid., 18. 16 [bid., 20. 17 Kenith Trodd, in notes for BBC music cassette of The Singing Detective (BBC Enterprises Ltd), 1986. 18 The Singing Detective, 30. 19 [bid., 38. 20 This line ends the first episode entitled 'Skin', but it is not in the published version. The episode headings (1. 'Skin', 2. 'Heat', 3. 'Lovely Days', 4. 'Clues', 5.
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'Pitter Patter', 6. 'Who Done ItT) are not used in the book either. 21 Christopher Dunkley, Financia/ Times, 23. 22 George Brandt, from unpublished notes for a lecture on The Singing Detective delivered at Leeds Polytechnic on 4 June 1991. 23 Jon Amiel interviewed by the author, 4 January 1992. 24 Dennis Potter quoted in Radio Times, 15 November 1986, 98. 25 Dennis Potter interviewed by James Seymour, StiUs 21 (November 1985). 26 Potter, Radio Times, 15 November 1986, 98. 27 Nancy Banks-Smith, The Guardian, 1December 1986, 11. Ms Banks-Smith says The Singing Detective 'is demonstrably Potter's Hamlet: the wanton mother, the betrayed father, even the built in detective story'. 28 Potter quoted in Time, I August 1988, 42. 29 Brandt, notes for a lecture. 30 Dennis Potter interviewed by Alan Yentob on Arena (BBC2), 30 January 1987. 31 Potter quoted in Radio Times, 15 November 1986,99. 32 Linda Gomez, 'The Subversive Potter', unpublished dissertation BA (Hons) in Film, Video and Photographic Arts, Polytechnic ofCentral London, 1989,34. 33 Dennis Potter, Daily Mai/, 30 July 1980. 34 Dennis Potter quoted in Radio Times, 15 November 1986,98. 35 Waiting for the Boat, 30. 36 [bid. 37 Brandt, notes for a lecture. 38 Linda Gomez, 'Subversive Potter', 32. 39 Jon Amiel interview, 4 January 1992. 40 Kenith Trodd interviewed by the author, 5 December 1991. 41 [bid. 42 Jon Amiel interview, 4 January 1992. 43 [bid. 44 Jim Clay interviewed by the author, 8 January 1992. 45 [bid. 46 [bid. 47 [bid. 48 Jon Amiel interview. 49 [bid. 50 [bid. 51 John Wyver, The Listener, 13 October 1986, 3(}-1. 52 Frances Hannon interviewed by the author, 13 January 1992. 53 [bid. 54 [bid. 55 [bid. 56 [bid. 57 Charles Catchpole, The Sun, 22 November 1986, 13. 58 Kenith Trodd, in notes for BBC music cassette of The Singing Detective. 59 Dennis Potter, in notes for BBC music cassette of The Singing Detective. 60 Richard Corliss, Fi/m Comment 24, 2 (March-April 1988), 17. 61 Jon Amiel interview. 62 [bid. 63 [bid. 64 [bid.
