Continues Thursday, January 21 at 7:30 In his six-part series, Casanova, Potter strives tocommunicate the relevance of the eighteenth-century libertine to acontemporary audience. For Potter, Casanova "was concerned withreligious and sexual freedom, and these are the things we have toaddress ourselves to now." Much of the series is a complexintercutting between Casanova's amorous adventures and his confinementin jail where he philosophizes on the nature of freedom. This handsomeperiod piece uses memory as an escape from an incarceration that is asspiritual as it is physical. Confined to his cell, Casanova mentallyjourneys through his life of debauchery and indulgence. But these mentalsojourns aren't a simple psychic escape, rather they afford him thepossibility of redemption. "I have become so reduced in this place,I have reached the essence of myself," he tells a fellow inmate.Nor is Potter above casting his own brand of suffering upon his ribaldprotagonist: in prison, Casanova suffers from a skin disease thatprompts dark hallucinations. Unlike more impersonal historical dramas,Casanova emanates from the vision of a single author, exploring theinner strife of the philosophical philanderer with a lustyirreverence.