Programme Details

Continuing the monthly series dedicated to celebrating the great landmarks of culture, Night Waves explores a seminal work of television drama - Dennis Potter's The Singing Detective. Broadcast in 1986, this six part series caused controversy at the time for the frankness of it's sex scenes, but it's position as one of the most innovative and challenging of all TV dramas remains undisputed. Mixing flashback and fantasy, it created a psychological profile of a writer of detective fiction, hospitalised - much like Potter was in real life - by a crippling skin disease. The result was a complex, multi-layered narrative, weaving together the detective thriller, the hospital drama, the musical, and the autobiography. Most importantly, the drama gave shape to modernism in television, framing the series around the memories, the anxieties, and the hallucinations inside the writer's head, in a way that had never been done before. Ten years after the death of Dennis Potter, Paul Allen is joined by the screenwriter Nick Dear, by Potter's biographer Humphrey Carpenter, and by the television historian Kate Dunn to re-examine the significance of Potter's masterpiece, and to trace its influence on television today.

Night Waves: Landmark on The Singing Detective, at 9.30pm on BBC Radio 3


Presenter: Paul Allen
Producer: Aasiya Lodhi