Potter on Potter

If one writer embodies the unique character of British television drama, it is Dennis Potter. Pennies from Heaven and The Singing Detective amply demonstrate how far he has pushed the frontiers of television drama.
In the course of this book, British television's pre-eminent playwright - latterly a novelist and film-maker - talks with passionate erudition, disarming candour and acerbic wit about the early influences that shaped him and led to his pioneering use of non-naturalism to his self-reflexive subversion of film and TV cliches, his controversial approach to sex, politics, religion and the double-edged puritanism of the English condition. The book presents a remarkable portrait of a man for whom writing is, first and foremost, a vocation.

Potter is best known in America as the author of two popular miniseries, Pennies from Heaven and The Singing Detective , shown here on public television. Fuller, executive editor of Interview magazine, produced this book from five interviews he conducted with Potter. As one would expect, Fuller is adept at his job. Those American readers who pick up the book, however, are likely to be disappointed, as much of it is concerned with works (such as his early plays written for the BBC) that have received little or no exposure here. For special collections. --John Smothers, Monmouth Cty. Lib., Manalapan, N.J.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.