Dennis Potter

Police Inspector Renko tries to solve the case of three bodies found in Moscow's Gorky Park but finds his attempts to solve the crime impeded by his superiors. Working on his own, Renko seeks out more information and stumbles across a conspiracy involving the highest levels of the government.

Tormented and bedridden by a debilitating disease, a mystery writer relives his detective stories through his imagination and hallucinations.

After a brief tutelage with innovative BBC documentary producer Denis Mitchell, Dennis Potter teamed with producer Anthony de Lotbiniere to film a documentary (later described by David Niven as "absolutely wonderful"). Returning to the Berry Hill roots of his childhood, Potter used interviews with locals (including his parents) to show changes in the working-class traditions of the Forest of Dean, where "the green forest has a deep black heart beneath its sudden hills, pushing up slag heaps and gray little villages clustering around the coal."

During the Great Depression, a sheet music salesman seeks to escape his dreary life through popular music and a love affair with an innocent schoolteacher.

Glen, a complete stranger, appears at the door of Elizabeth Carter, a middle-aged woman, and claims to be the illegitimate son she gave away at birth.

Years after a desperate teenage Linda gives up her baby for adoption, she finds herself face-to-face with Martin, a young man claiming to be her long-lost son. Linda embraces Martin and in him finds a welcome reprieve from her unhappy marriage to the neglectful Henry. But soon Martin grows violent and becomes obsessed with Henry -- a philandering man whose only offspring is an expansive model train set that devours his waking hours.

On an idyllic summer afternoon in the summer of 1943, a group of children play in the West Country hills, fields and forests. With no adults around, they indulge in spontaneous games and horseplay - sometimes echoing the distant war, at other times revealing their own insecurities and petty vindictiveness.

80-year-old Alice Hargreaves is about to visit Columbia University to attend a reception in honour of author Lewis Carroll. As a child, Alice's close friendship with the writer was the creative catalyst for Carroll's most beloved work. However, as Alice reflects on her experiences with the author, she slowly realises the complexity of their bond has had lasting, deeply felt ramifications.

A reclusive author is visited by a young admirer - but both men are more than they claim to be.

A British businessman whose family company has been taken over by a multinational corporation clashes with his new American manager while they both vacation with their families at an Italian villa at their employer's expense. The manager's son fantasizes a murderous outcome.

Past and present intertwine: An elderly couple returns to the hotel where they became close when they were young and flashbacks to the earlier visit reveal the origins of both their pleasures and problems. Somewhere between the past and the present, Dennis Potter attempted to find "the shape of a life, of two lives..."

George, an ineffectual and inoffensive clerk, and his prim wife Gladys reserve their greatest efforts for preserving their respectibility. Sam, a rough-necked American seaman, invades their dull suburban routine. The play examines the clash of cultures between a fading British Empire and the dominance of American materialistic values.

A mysterious stranger inserts himself into a troubled family's life, blurring the lines between good and evil as he cares for their disabled daughter.

A no-nonsense businessman, Mr. Wilkie, is interviewed for a position with a top-of-the-line hotel chain corporation. During the interview, Wilkie attempts to complete a shaggy-dog story. His frustrations lead to a total breakdown. He suddenly snaps and pulls a gun on the interviewers.

A young local girl is murdered by a mentally disturbed youth, but the villagers blame a stranger, an Italian traveling showman and his bear, rather than see the rot in their own camp.

Candidate Nigel Barton goes from idealism to cynicism as he becomes disillusioned and suspicious of hollow campaign promises.

Semi-autobiographical TV play by Dennis Potter, from the BBC's 'Wednesday Play' series. It deals with the experiences of Nigel Barton, a young man from a poor mining community who wins a scholarship to Oxford University. The villagers accuse him of snobbery, while the rich University students treat him like a peasant. Uncertain of which sphere he should be moving in, Nigel tries to reconcile himself with his proud but stubborn father, and also succeed at University, despite its pretentions which apall him.

Dennis Potter's controversial reading of the life of Christ, with Jesus portrayed as a hearty, fiery, well-meaning carpenter who believes that people should try to love their enemies rather than fight all the time, but who is racked by self doubt as to whether or not he is the popularly anticipated Messiah.

A mysterious stranger inserts himself into a troubled family's life, blurring the lines between good and evil as he cares for their disabled daughter.

Another of Dennis Potter's "visitation dramas": Adultery by John disturbs Janet, so she flirts with the simple, mistreated Billy during the middle of giving him a reading lesson. Unfortunately, it triggers aggressive behavior in Billy which he directs toward John.

Dennis Potter used his own background as a Russian language clerk in the War Office when writing this play for ITV's SATURDAY NIGHT THEATRE series. At the time of the 1956 Suez Crisis and the Russian invasion of Hungary, Private Bob Hawk reports to the London Intelligence Office where the strength of Soviet troops is under scrutiny.

During a train ride, an anxiety attack leads middle-aged illustrator John into an identity crisis. As his marital problems merge and blur into his fantasy life with prostitutes and call girls, a long-dormant secret friend of his childhood surfaces in his delusions.

Jack Black is a disturbed commercial actor who believes himself to be trapped in a television play, followed around by an invisible camera.

Playwright Christopher Hudson finds his medical problem hinders his writing. He employs secretary Sandra George and dictates his new play to her, but tensions soon develop between the two. As Hudson creates, scenes from his play are dramatized and interpolated. The play being created is Dennis Potter's Angels Are So Few, seen with a totally different cast from the 1970 BBC production.

Play for Today is a British television anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC1 from 1970 to 1984. During the run, more than three hundred programmes, featuring original television plays, and adaptations of stage plays and novels, were transmitted. The individual episodes were between fifty and a hundred minutes in duration.

An anthology series of television plays which aired on BBC1 from October 1964 to May 1970. The plays were usually written for television, although adaptations from other sources also featured.

Series of single made-for-television dramas.

The South Bank Show is a television arts magazine show produced by ITV between 1978 and 2010. A new series began on Sky Arts from 27 May 2012. Presented by Melvyn Bragg, the show aims to bring both high art and popular culture to a mass audience.

ITV Playhouse is a British comedy-drama TV series that ran from 1967 to 1983, which featured contributions from playwrights such as Dennis Potter, Rhys Adrian and Alan Sharp. The series began in black and white, but was later shot in colour and was produced by various companies for the ITV network, a format that would inspire Dramarama. Actors appearing in the series included Leslie Anderson, Gwen Nelson, Ricky Alleyne, Pat Heywood, Michael Elphick, Ian Hendry, Edward Woodward, Margaret Lockwood, Jessie Matthews and Lloyd Peters.

An anthology of short plays shown on BBC Television between 1965 and 1973, used in part at least as a training ground for new writers, on account of its short length, and which therefore attracted many writers who later became well known.

Anthology series of dramatic works.

An anthology series of various plays and dramatic performances.

Tormented and bedridden by a debilitating disease, a mystery writer relives his detective stories through his imagination and hallucinations.

Exhaustive 13-part survey of the television medium from its hesitant beginnings in the 1920s to the multi-million dollar extravaganzas of today and the cable and satellite technologies of the future [relative to 1985]. Tackling the medium as a worldwide phenomenon, the series examines each of the principal areas of programming - news, drama, documentaries, and light entertainment - and the unique impact of "live" coverage.

That Was the Week That Was, informally TWTWTW or TW3, is a satirical television comedy programme on BBC Television in 1962 and 1963. It was devised, produced and directed by Ned Sherrin and presented by David Frost. The programme is considered a significant element of the satire boom in the United Kingdom in the early 1960s. It broke ground in comedy through lampooning the establishment and political figures. Its broadcast coincided with coverage of the politically charged Profumo affair and John Profumo, the politician at the centre of the affair, became a target for derision. TW3 was first broadcast on Saturday 24 November 1962.

An anthology series of BBC television dramas on sexual themes. The same cast are featured in each production.

In the French Riviera of the 1920s, wealthy expatriate Nicole Warren's mental illness strains her marriage to psychiatrist Dick Diver. A young American actress named Rosemary Hoyt arrives and is drawn into their circle, becoming romantically involved with the older Dick and disrupting the fragile balance of the group. The thought of Dick possibly being attracted to another sends Nicole on an emotional downward spiral that threatens to consume them all. Tender Is the Night is a 1985 television drama miniseries co-produced by Showtime, 20th Century Fox Television, BBC, and 7 Network. Based on F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1934 novel of the same name, the six-part series focuses on themes of love, ambition, mental illness, and the decline of the American Dream.

Screenwriter Daniel Feeld experiences bizarre coincidences as his screenplay—about a karaoke bar, an employee named Sandra, and her murder by Arthur 'Pig' Mallion—seems to mirror reality, with a karaoke bar, an employee named Sandra, and a shady owner named Mallion.

Pennies From Heaven is a 1978 BBC television drama serial written by Dennis Potter. The title is taken from a song of the same name written by Johnny Burke and Arthur Johnston. It was one of several Potter serials to mix the reality of the drama with a dark fantasy content, and the earliest of his works where the characters burst into miming to popular 1930s songs. During the Great Depression, a sheet music salesman seeks to escape his dreary life through popular music and a love affair with an innocent schoolteacher.

At a country fair, young hay-trusser Michael Henchard quarrels with his wife Susan, and in a drunken fit decides to auction off his wife and baby to a sailor for five guineas. The next day, realising his loss, he swears not to touch liquor again for as many years as he has lived so far. Eighteen years later, Henchard has become Mayor of Casterbridge, a man well respected but not well liked. The unexpected return of his wife and daughter Elizabeth Jane sets off a turn of events that force him to face the consequences of his selfish impulses and violent temper.

Cold Lazarus is a four-part British television drama written by Dennis Potter with the knowledge that he was dying of pancreatic cancer. Forming the second half of a pair with the television serial Karaoke, it is Potter's sole science fiction work. In a bleak, synthetic 24th-century dystopian Britain, scientists work on reviving the mind of 20th-century writer Daniel Feeld, whose head was frozen after Feeld's death shortly after the events of 'Karaoke'. Progress has not been made, so discontinuation is considered, but media mogul David Siltz, who has been spying on the project, envisages a fortune from broadcasting Feeld's memories on TV.

An anthology series based on the Wessex Tales, a collection of short stories by novelist Thomas Hardy.

During the Suez Crisis of 1956, two young clerks at the stuffy Foreign Office in Whitehall display little interest in the decline of the British Empire. To their eyes, it can hardly compete with girls, rock music, and the intrigue of romantic entanglements.

The Mayor of Casterbridge is a 1978 BBC seven-part serial based on the eponymous 1886 book by the British novelist Thomas Hardy. The six-hour drama was written by dramatist Dennis Potter and directed by David Giles, with Alan Bates as the title character. Michael Henchard, an out-of-work hay-trusser, gets drunk at a fair and, for five guineas, sells his wife and child to a sailor. When the horror of his act finally sets in, Henchard swears he will not touch alcohol for twenty-one years. Through hard work and acumen, he becomes rich, respected, and eventually the mayor of Casterbridge. But eighteen years after his fateful oath, his wife and daughter return to Casterbridge, and his fortunes steadily decline.

The Company of Five is a 1968 British anthology drama series produced by London Weekend Television for ITV, featuring a repertory cast of five actors—John Neville, Gwen Watford, Ann Bell, Cyril Luckham, and Ray Smith—who appear in different roles each week.

Blackeyes is a four-part BBC television miniseries written and directed by Dennis Potter, based on his novel of the same name. The complex, surreal drama follows novelist Maurice James Kingsley, who bases a successful book on his niece Jessica's modeling career, angering her as he turns her experiences into a story of a victimised woman named Blackeyes. Jessica in turn rewrites the novel to liberate the character.

Italian adventurer and libertine Giovanni Jacopo Casanova lived from 1725 to 1798, but in this six-part series Dennis Potter attempted to find a contemporary relevance through his central themes of sex and religion. He commented that Casanova "was concerned with religious and sexual freedom, and these are the things we have to address ourselves to now." Casanova was imprisoned in Venice in 1755, and Potter used that event as a central device, constantly inter-cutting to contrast Casanova's amorous escapades, radiant, joyful and brightly lit, with his oppressive solitary confinement in the gloom of a half-darkened cell.

Elderly couple Sylvia and Arthur Calvert are forced to move in with their widowed son and his children in Carshall New Town.