Dennis Potter (1935–1994)

Growing up, I knew Potter was an important TV writer. My dad, who generally preferred the minor dramas of sport to fictional ones and who read Tom Sharpe, Frederick Forsyth novels and sports biographies rather than anything by the Amises or McEwan, always recorded the latest Potter, or Potter repeats. That he’d do so indicated to me that Potter plays were events, the equivalent of televisual tablets handed down from Mount Sinai. In terms of British TV that impression isn’t too far off show more the mark – this was a writer who could get the BBC and Channel 4 to honour his dying wishes by making his last dramas co-productions which were shown on both channels a day apart. There are few figures of that stature now, and with the changes in the industry since it’s hard to see anyone having the clout to make it happen again, particularly a mere writer.

The Art of Invective is the less told half of Potter’s story; a vast overview of his work as journalist and critic. By definition much of this is not as essential as his television work (not that he regarded his television work as any more permanent than journalism, comparing it in one piece here to flickering shadows of a fire on a wall), but it’s educational in watching him develop and in how a writer can also function as a critic. Kenneth Tynan was famously dismayed that his fiction could never match up to his critical work and even asserted that writers were one or the other but Potter gives the lie to that here. The criticism selected is very much of a piece with his television work; questioning, awkward and pointed. It lacks the urbane charm and easy wit of Clive James’s Observer columns but then that was never Potter’s style – his punchlines rarely carried the relief of easy laughter; all his jokes had bitter hearts that rendered the laughter uncomfortable (see , for instance, his reflections on a trip to Eastbourne here). And he often dispensed with laughter altogether; his reportage from Aberfan following the famous disaster of 1966 is a heartbreaking masterpiece. Most of all his pieces seem powered by a bitterness of soul born of disappointment, of the flaws of human nature; of how society was letting people down; of how much of television’s potential was left unrealised. His fury is the fury of the disappointed. And his commitment to expressing it was total, even to the point of it souring relations with other writers (a memorable one with Alan Plater is recorded here, posing the question of whether writers not being critics is a matter of courtesy to peers). But when he finds programmes which don’t let him down, it stands out like a priest on a mountain of sugar.

The only flaw of this collection is one that cannot be helped; almost all of Potter’s printed criticism is done by 1978, finished by a moral stand against the then owners of the Sunday Times. The most interesting phase of Potter’s career, the one which followed Pennies from Heaven and lasted until his death, is sparsely documented, represented mainly by letters to newspapers, interviews and book introductions. It’s a shame Potter’s non-fiction dries up, falling away in the cracks between attempts to write movies and his late masterpieces such as The Singing Detective and Blackeyes. His interview regarding the latter presented here is excellent, framing the reaction to the play as part of the art of the play itself and the problem it deals with. The issues it deals with remain a problem in TV and society as a whole to this day, possibly even exaggerated by the rise of social media. It almost demands that the reader rewatches a much misunderstood play.

Much credit must go to the book’s editors; their introductory essays to the three sections of the book are sharp and knowledgeable and their no doubt arduous task in whittling down Potter’s journalistic output has been carried out skilfully and sympathetically. They don’t hide what might be seen as flaws, nor ignore issues in Potter’s writing but seek to present a coherent picture, providing both essential content and the flavour of his non-fiction career. It’s precisely the sort of beautifully curated work that a writer of Potter’s stature deserves. Potter did not waste his time on television; he quite correctly saw it as the mass democratic artform of the twentieth century; but it’s often clear from this book that television’s gain was criticism’s loss. show less

An interesting, surreal novel. An elderly writer has produced a best seller about the tribulations of a beautiful young model, Blackeyes. What the world doesn't know is that it was cribbed from the memories and diaries of his niece... who had her own reasons for helping him write the story. Blackeyes is found drowned in Kensington Gardens - in real life? Or is this just fantasy? Or all part of the male gaze that fills this book?

Four stars because it was interesting but not un-putdownable.

Bafflingly inferior to the TV series, to the point where it feels like the filmmakers didn't grasp why the original was so brilliant. Baffling because Dennis Potter wrote the screenplay -- though it's likely there were significant changes in the decade between when he wrote it and when it was made. It feels more like karaoke or a jukebox musical, where the songs are randomly shoehorned in without any particular purpose.

I haven't read many plays outside of Shakespeare and Tennessee Williams and the occasional Ionesco in college French classes, and now I'm wondering why. Reading The Singing Detective> was a remarkable visualization-experiment. It's strange that, even though there are fewer words here to make a picture with in my mind, teverything appeared much more vividly to my mind's eye than I typical novel scene does to me, even if I've never seen the television play. The layers of alternative realities show more that weave and wind throughout the play made this quite an experience and I'm curious now to see the play performed. show less