Dennis Potter first used popular music as an expression of human aspiration in Moonlight on the Highway. David Peters (Ian Holm) is a disturbed young man who lives his life through the music of the thirties crooner Al Bowlly (described as an English Bing Crosby). Peters publishes the newsletter for the Bowlly fan club and has converted his home into a shrine for the singer, who was killed during the London blitz. "Once dreams were possible, that's what the popular songs told us," says Peters (perhaps speaking for Potter). The music provides Peters with a romantic ideal, a world of purity and innocence he cannot find in the rock music of the late sixties. His obsession also hides the pain of his own past-the death of his father during the war and a sexual assault by a mysterious man. His inadequacies disappear when he lip-synchs a Bowlly song. Moonlight anticipates the imaginative treatment of popular music that Potter honed to perfection in Pennies from Heaven.