Profile of Dennis Potter on Famous Like Me

Dennis Christopher George Potter (May 17, 1935 – June 7, 1994) was a controversial British dramatist who is best known for several widely acclaimed television dramas which mixed fantasy and reality, the personal and the social. He was particularly fond of using themes and images from popular culture.

Early Life

Potter was born in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire. His father was a coalminer in the Forest of Dean, a rural industrial area between Gloucester and Wales. During his National Service he learnt Russian at the Joint Services School for Linguists. He won a scholarship to New College, Oxford, and started work for the BBC in the late 1950s. He also worked as a journalist and considered becoming a Labour MP – unsuccessfully standing for Hertfordshire East in the 1964 general election, and claiming that by the end of the campaign he was so disillusioned with party politics that he did not even vote for himself – before embarking on his career as a television playwright.

Television Work

Potter's career as a playwright began conventionally enough with works like Vote, Vote, Vote for Nigel Barton (The Wednesday Play, 1965), a BBC play about a parliamentary candidate, based on Potter's own experiences as such. He took a major step into controversy with Son of Man (The Wednesday Play, 1969), starring Colin Blakely, an alternative view of the last days of Jesus, which led to his being accused of blasphemy. His 1971 serial Casanova was criticised for its sexual content. Another play, Brimstone and Treacle (Play for Today, 1976), was withheld by the BBC for many years due to concerns over the depiction of the rape of a disabled woman. It was eventually broadcast on BBC2 in 1987, although a film version had been made, with Sting in the leading role, in 1982.

Potter's groundbreaking play, Blue Remembered Hills, was first shown on the BBC on 30 January 1979. There may have been a second showing soon afterwards, but it finally returned to the British small screen in the summer of 2005, showcased as part of the winning decade (1970's) having been voted by BBC4 viewers as the golden era of British television. The BBC video has long been unavailable. It finally recieved a DVD release in September 2005. The adult actors playing the roles of children were Helen Mirren, Janine Duvitski, Michael Elphick, Colin Jeavons, Colin Welland, John Bird, Robin Ellis. It was directed by Brian Gibson. The moralistic theme was 'the child is father of the man'. Potter had used the dramatic device of adult actors playing children before, however the powerful imagery of "Blue Remember Hills" lives on with the generation that first saw it not least because of its uneasy, claustrophobic feeling provoking elements of xenophobia and a consideration of fearing the 'outsider' such was the prevalence of the post-war mood within British society.

Potter continued to make news as well as winning critical acclaim for drama serials such as Pennies From Heaven (1978) – which brought Bob Hoskins into the limelight – and The Singing Detective (1986), which did the same for Michael Gambon. Although he won many awards for his writing, Potter was generally regarded quizzically by the general viewing public. His TV serial, Blackeyes (1989, also a novel), a drama about a fashion model was widely regarded as self-indulgent. Potter's romantic comedy Lipstick on Your Collar (1993) was a return to more conventional themes.

Psoriasis

During the early 1960s, Potter began to suffer from an acute form of psoriasis known as psoriatic arthropathy, a rare hereditary condition that affected his skin and caused arthritis in his joints. There is some indication that this disease is the one the Bible refers to as "leprosy" (which is not Hansen's disease). For the rest of his life, Potter was frequently in hospital, sometimes completely unable to move and in great pain. The disease eventually ruined his hands, reducing them to what he called "clubs". He had to learn to write by strapping a pen to his hand.

In February 1994, Potter learned that he had terminal cancer of the pancreas and liver. With typical sardonic humour, he named his cancer Rupert, after Rupert Murdoch, who represented so much that he hated about British society. He continued to care for his wife suffering from the breast cancer that was to kill her, and then he died a week after her.

Last Interview

Shortly before his death, Potter gave a memorable, if uncomfortable to witness, interview to Channel 4 (he had broken most of his ties with the BBC as a result of his disenchantment with Directors-General Michael Checkland and especially John Birt, whom he had famously described as a "croak-voiced Dalek" ), in which he described his work and his determination to continue writing until the end. As he sipped on a morphine cocktail, he told interviewer Melvyn Bragg: "My only regret is if I die four pages too soon."

Final Works

His final two serials, Karaoke and Cold Lazarus (two related stories, both starring Albert Finney as the same principal character, one set in the present and the other in the future), were aired posthumously in the United Kingdom as part of a rare collaboration between the BBC and rival Channel 4.

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