"A collection of eight of the acclaimed playwright's classic drama works for the BBC in a 13 disc set – over 30 hours of content!
BBC DVD is proud to announce the release of this stunning and comprehensive, 13 disc Dennis Potter Boxed Set Collection, a must have for all fans of Dennis Potter's imaginative, controversial, experimental, powerful and critically acclaimed work.
The collection includes The Singing Detective, a critically acclaimed dramatic masterpiece, starring Michael Gambon in one of his finest award-winning roles. Recognised as a seminal TV series, it brings together old and new themes in a murder mystery-musical-thriller-romance – the like of which had not been seen before on television. It was voted number 20 in the British Film Institute's all time Top 100 TV programmes.
Pennies from Heaven, set in the 1930s depression era England stars Bob Hoskins in his breakthrough role as cockney song sheet salesman, Arthur Parker. This six-part drama series has received great popular and critical acclaim, including the BAFTA Award for Outstanding Drama, when it was first transmitted on BBC TV in 1978. It was voted number 21 in the British Film Institute's all time Top 100 TV programmes.
Filmed in 1976, Brimstone and Treacle proved so controversial with the censors that BBC chose to ban the drama for 11 years before finally screening it in 1987. This black-morality play, challenges established concepts of good and evil by tackling an almost unthinkable subject and stars Denholm Elliot and Michael Kitchen.
Casanova was Potter's first adaptation and his first TV series and tells the story of the Italian adventurer and libertine Giovanni Jacopo Casanova. The focus is on his time in a Venice prison which is inter-cut with his many colourful, romantic escapades.
Stand Up, Nigel Barton and Vote, Vote, Vote for Nigel Barton were two television plays produced in 1965. The combined first and second parts of Dennis Potter's semi-autobiographical double bill explore social class, politics and principles. These first plays helped establish Potter's reputation as a major writer of passion and ideas.
Potter's acclaimed television play, Blue Remembered Hills is the most straightforward and realistic of his popular works – is both a hilarious and incredibly moving story. Through the simple act of using adults in the roles, Potter was able to emphasize the darker aspects of children's innocence and imagination, creating an altogether more complex and ambivalent picture of that “land of lost content.”
Potter's reputation was further enhanced by this adaptation of Thomas Hardy's powerful and tragic novel, The Mayor of Casterbridge