On the DVD commentary for the original television serial, director Piers Haggard claims he approached Potter during filming of the series with the suggestion of producing a cinematic version starring the original cast. Potter allegedly responded by telling Haggard "there's no point – we've already done it now!". Potter's screenplay for Gorky Park (1983) led to his gaining an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America, although it emerged as a shadow of Martin Cruz Smith's original novel. Dennis Christopher George Potter (17 May 1935– 7 June 1994) was an English television dramatist, screenwriter and journalist. He is best known for his BBC television serials Pennies from Heaven (1978) and The Singing Detective (1986) as well as the BBC television plays Blue Remembered Hills (1979) and Brimstone and Treacle (1976). [1] His television dramas mixed fantasy and reality, the personal and the social, and often used themes and images from popular culture. Potter is widely regarded as one of the most influential and innovative dramatists to have worked in British television. Nine days later, on 7 June 1994, Potter died of pancreatic cancer in Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire, England, at age 59. [21] See also [ edit ]

The story's typical of the author's work, which is to say it's a complex arrangement of layers presented in an unconventional, creative manner; a non-linear narrative that ebbs and flows; a sensual tide that takes as much as it gives. The Independent, 7 January 2005, previewing Arena – Dennis Potter:It's in the Songs! It's in the Songs! BBC Four Burrell, Ian (24 February 1997). "That nice Alan Bennett takes the gloves off for Tory politicians, the Queen Mother - and Dennis Potter". The Independent . Retrieved 10 October 2020.Arena: Painting the Clouds: A Portrait of Dennis Potter (2003)". The Encyclopedia of Fantastic Film & Television. Archived from the original on 6 April 2012 . Retrieved 28 August 2019.

Potter's career as a television playwright began with The Confidence Course, an exposé of the Dale Carnegie Institute that drew threats of litigation. Although Potter effectively disowned the play, it is notable for its use of non-naturalistic dramatic devices (in this case breaking the fourth wall) which would become hallmarks of Potter's subsequent work. Broadcast as part of the BBC's The Wednesday Play strand in 1965, The Confidence Course proved successful and Potter was invited for further contributions. His next play, Alice (1965), was a controversial drama chronicling the relationship between Lewis Carroll and his muse Alice Liddell. Potter's most celebrated works from this period are the semi-autobiographical plays Stand Up, Nigel Barton! and Vote, Vote, Vote for Nigel Barton; the former the tale of a miner's son going to Oxford University where he finds himself torn between two worlds, the latter featuring the same character standing as a Labour candidate — his disillusionment with the compromises of electoral politics is based on Potter's own experience. Both plays received praise from critics' circles but aroused considerable tension at the BBC for their potentially incendiary critique of party politics. Between 1953 and 1955, his national service was in the Intelligence Corps of the British Army [4] and he learned Russian at the Joint Services School for Linguists. [5] Having won a State Scholarship to New College, Oxford, [6] [7] he studied philosophy, politics and economics. [8] Early career [ edit ] Potter's most highly regarded works from this period were the semi-autobiographical plays Stand Up, Nigel Barton! and Vote, Vote, Vote for Nigel Barton, which featured Keith Barron. The former recounts the experience of a miner's son attending Oxford University where he finds himself torn between two worlds, culminating in Barton's participation in a television documentary. This mirrored Potter's participation in Does Class Matter (1958), a television documentary made while Potter was an Oxford undergraduate. [16] The second play features the same character standing as a Labour candidate—his disillusionment with the compromises of electoral politics is based on Potter's own experience. [17] Both plays received praise from critics but aroused considerable tension at the BBC for their potentially incendiary critique of party politics. [17] In his James MacTaggart Memorial Lecture in 1993, Potter recalled how he was asked by "several respected men at the corporation why I wanted to shit on the Queen." [18] First film screenplays [ edit ]Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2010-02-22 21:24:12 Boxid IA114211 Boxid_2 CH122401 Camera Canon 5D City New York Donor In some regards, it's Potter-does-Potter, really - there's The Enduring Mystery Of Women, rooting and bits of improbable nudity. There's no doubt that though the main male character of the novel shares a name with an Amis, the doddering, farting author is something of a stand-in for the ageing Potter himself: all befuddlement and teddy bear attachment. To tie-in with the release of the MGM production of Pennies from Heaven in 1981, Potter wrote a novelisation of the screenplay. Potter turned down the option of writing a novelisation for the film version of Brimstone and Treacle, allowing his daughter Sarah to write it instead.

Morris, Stephen (27 June 2013). "Dennis Potter archive offers glimpse into mind of celebrated writer". The Guardian. The result was a critical bloodbath in the United Kingdom, with the director accused of precisely the misogyny and sexploitation he claimed he had been trying to expose on screen. Lccn 88040204 Ocr ABBYY FineReader 8.0 Ocr_converted abbyy-to-hocr 1.1.20 Ocr_module_version 0.0.16 Openlibrary_edition The most prolific yet also most controversial of television playwrights, he remains the undisputed figurehead of that peculiarly British phenomenon of writers who make it their passion to show that television can be just as powerful a vehicle for artistic expression as cinema or theatre. The Singing Detective (1986), featuring Michael Gambon, used the dramatist's own battle with the skin disease psoriasis, for him an often debilitating condition, as a means to merge the lead character's imagination with his perception of reality.Griffin's Eye, Daily Mirror, 30 November 1989 (reproduced in Dennis Potter - A Biography by Humphrey Carpenter, Faber and Faber 1998, image no. 36)

Potter was also the director, so the camera is his eye, a part of the space it helped create, moving god-like through it and inside of it. Bennett, Alan (21 January 1999). "What I did in 1998". London Review of Books. 21 (2) . Retrieved 10 October 2020. Born in Gloucestershire and graduating from Oxford University, Potter initially worked in journalism. After standing for parliament as a Labour candidate at the 1964 general election, his health was affected by the onset of psoriatic arthropathy which necessitated Potter to change career and led to his becoming a television dramatist. He began with contributions to BBC1's regular series The Wednesday Play from 1965, and he continued to work in the medium for the rest of his life, including writing screenplay adaptations for Hollywood studios. Potter died of pancreatic cancer in 1994.

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This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. ( July 2018) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) Potter's career in the early 1980s was spent as a screenwriter for the cinema. He returned to the BBC for a co-production with 20th Century Fox, writing the scripts for a widely praised but seldom-seen miniseries of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night (1985) with Mary Steenburgen as Nicole Diver. Immersed in a typically Potter-esque amalgam of reality and fiction, slimy advertising men like Stilk (Nicholas Woodeson) and the seemingly decent observer, Jeff (Nigel Planer), played their parts in showing how young girls can become abused in the glamour industry. Occupying Powers" (PDF). MacTaggart Lecture, Edinburgh International Television Festival. 28 August 1993 . Retrieved 22 October 2016. Potter also directed the four episodes and provided the copious narration in his unmistakable West Country burr.