Best known to American audiences as the creator of Pennies from Heaven and The Singing Detective, British playwright and novelist Dennis Potter is surely one of the most challenging, literate, controversial, and singularly entertaining talents in television today. These special holiday screenings are a preview of a major retrospective of Potter's highly original teleplays which will be shown throughout the month of January.
To watch a Potter program is to enter a complex of psychological conflicts, obsessive longings, and bizarre fantasies. It is also to experience the utmost in the storytelling capabilities of the medium. The December screenings offer a quick survey of many of Potter's stylistic and thematic signatures: his use of popular music as a vehicle of human aspiration, his preoccupation with the blocked artist, recurrent explorations of religious faith that stir up their fair share of controversy along the way, and Potter's sly assertion that the human imagination seeks “a perfect place of refuge” no matter how ludicrous the conception.
