Playwright, born in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire, SWC England, UK. He studied at Oxford, and was a journalist and TV critic before he began writing plays. Although he wrote for the stage (Sufficient Carbohydrate, 1984), he was primarily a television dramatist. His first success was Vote, Vote, Vote for Nigel Barton (1965). Other plays include Brimstone and Treacle (1976), Blue Remembered Hills (1979, BAFTA), Cream in my Coffee (1982, Prix Italia), The Singing Detective (1986), and Lipstick on Your Collar (1993). Several dealt with controversial topics, such as the treatment of the self-doubting Christ in Son of Man (1969). His work was often technically innovative, as in Pennies from Heaven (1978), which required the actors to mime to popular songs of the 1920s and 1930s that intercut the action. His work includes a novel, Hide and Seek (1973). He completed Karaoke and Cold Lazarus just before his death.
Dennis Christopher George Potter (17 May 1935—7 June 1994) was a controversial English dramatist who is best known for several widely acclaimed television dramas which mixed fantasy and reality, the personal and the social.
Potter was born in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire. He won a scholarship to New College, Oxford, and started work for the BBC in the late 1950s, later writing sketches for That Was The Week That Was. 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.
His 1971 serial Casanova was criticised for its sexual content.
Potter's groundbreaking play, Blue Remembered Hills, was first shown on the BBC on 30 January 1979.
Potter had used the dramatic device of adult actors playing children before, however the powerful imagery of "Blue Remembered 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. Both series were adapted as feature films with 'Pennies' gaining Potter an Oscar nomination. Potter's screenplay for the 1983 film Gorky Park earned him an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America.
His TV serial, Blackeyes (1989, also a novel), a drama about a fashion model was reviewed as self-indulgent by some critics. Potter also proposed to write an 'intermedia' stage play for Geisler-Roberdeau based on William Hazlitt’s Liber Amoris, or The New Pygmalion (he died before it could be commenced). Potter's romantic comedy Lipstick on Your Collar (1993) was a return to more conventional themes.
Although Potter won few awards, he is held in high regard by many within the television and film industry, and he was an obvious influence on such creators as Steven Bochco, Alan Ball, Margaret Edson and Alain Resnais.
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. For the rest of his life, Potter was frequently in hospital, sometimes completely unable to move and in great pain.
In February 1994, Potter learned that he had terminal cancer of the pancreas and liver.
He continued to care for his wife, Margaret Morgan Potter, who was suffering from the breast cancer that would soon claim her life, and then he died (aged 59) a week after she did.
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 referred to as a "croak-voiced Dalek" ), in which he described his work and his determination to continue writing until the end.
Final works
His final two serials were 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). They were aired posthumously in the United Kingdom as part of a rare collaboration between the BBC and rival Channel 4 in accordance with Potter's wishes.
Criticism
Potter was sometimes attacked by other television writers, most notably Alan Bennett and Matthew Graham, for a perceived lack of humility and self-criticism ; Bennett referred in his 1998 diaries to a television programme "that took Potter at his own self-evaluation (always high), when there was a good deal of indifferent stuff which was skated over".
User Comments Add a comment…