Potter, Dennis Christopher George

▪ 1995

      British dramatist (b. May 17, 1935, Berry Hill, near the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire, England—d. June 7, 1994, Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire, England), wrote television dramas that challenged the conventions of the medium as well as the expectations of the audience. He often used shocking themes, fantasy sequences, and musical interludes (in which the actors lip-synched to old recordings of period songs) to break the dramatic mood and to provide running commentary on the characters and on the real world beyond the play. After graduating from New College, Oxford (B.A., 1959), Potter made documentaries for BBC television. In 1961 he was stricken with psoriatic arthropathy, a painful and crippling disease of the joints and skin that plagued him for the rest of his life. Unable to work for long periods, he became a television critic and dramatist. His first teleplays, "Vote Vote Vote for Nigel Barton" and "Stand Up, Nigel Barton," were broadcast in December 1965. "Pennies from Heaven" (1978), a six-part serial about a Depression-era sheet-music salesman deluded by his fantasies of love, established Potter's reputation both for quality and for controversy, although his 1981 film adaptation was a failure. "The Singing Detective" (1986), his best-known and most obviously autobiographical teleplay, concerns a novelist suffering with psoriatic arthropathy who lies helpless in a hospital bed dreaming of his childhood in the Forest of Dean, mentally rewriting a pulp-fiction detective novel, and hallucinating fantastic musical numbers. Potter's other teleplays include "Brimstone and Treacle" (written in 1976 but not televised until 1987 because its subject matter was deemed sacrilegious), "Blue Remembered Hills" (1979), "Blade on the Feather" (1984), "Christabel" (1989), "Blackeyes" (1989), and "Lipstick on Your Collar" (1993). He also wrote novels, a stage play, and screenplays, notably Gorky Park (1983) and Dreamchild (1985). In a television interview in April 1994, Potter announced that he was dying of pancreatic and liver cancer. He spent the last weeks of his life caring for his wife (who died of cancer one week before Potter) and completing two final teleplays: "Karaoke" and "Cold Lazarus."

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