Diagonaldi Very well executed

SanEat A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

Murphy Howard I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Celia A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Graham Greene The Singing Detective is one of those great works that inspire something deep within the viewer, leaving them both shaken and elated by the spectacle they have just witnessed. Few cinematic works can inspire such a feeling, let alone a work for television; and it is this sense of genius that elevates this work above the comparatively "okay" likes of say, Cracker, Brideshead Revisited, and Prime Suspect et al. This is down to the fact that The Singing Detective is a work far greater than anything else; a microcosm of life, love, anger, defeat, consciousness and the sub-conscious. It deals with the intricate realms of fantasy and reality, the written, the understood and the real. If this sounds complicated then we're on the right track, because this is one of Dennis Potter's most detailed narrative constructs. The story chronicles a writer's decent into personal hell, as well as a decent into a book being written in his own imagination and a book written many years before; with his past, present and future all jostling for our attention throughout the epic, six-hours-plus running-time.It is a testament to Potter's ability as a screenwriter that the whole thing zips along so quickly, with the multi-layered story never pausing for a moment; constantly being carried along at every step by the combined genius of Potter's characters, the skillful and visually rich direction of Jon Amiel and that towering central performance from the brilliant Michael Gambon. The writing is truly ecstatic, with Potter obviously relishing every chance he gets to play with both the musical and detective-movie clichés - bringing to mind both Casablanca and Potter's own-classic Pennies From Heaven - whilst the dialog of Gambon's inner-monologues have more in common with the profane poetry of 60's playwrights that anything you'd expect to hear on BBC 2. The story also has obvious political overtones, with Potter using the hospital setting of the present sequences to double as an allegory of 80's Britain under the tyrannical leadership of Margaret Thatcher (bringing to mind the Elvis Costello song Tramp the Dirt Down and those other hospital set political parables, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Britannia Hospital).The story is also somewhat semi-autobiographical from Potter's point of view, with the writer, at this point in time, suffering from the same psoriatic-arthritis that Gambon's character Marlow has (creating that devastating, iconic image of the paralytic Marlow languishing half-naked in bed, being greased by a young Joanne Whally). There are also the much deeper autobiographical aspects with the young Marlow's childhood in the shady and evergreen Forest of Dean, in which the pastoral setting gives way to some truly shocking moments; recalling similar childhood traumas from such diverse examples as Iain Bank's Complicity and Rob Reiner's film Stand by Me. However, within this mire of bitterness, surrealism, bouts of lip-synced cabaret and phantasmagorical shoot-outs, there is also a great deal of humour. Anyone who has seen one of Potter's early TV plays or, for that matter, later classics like Karaoke and Cold Lazarus will know of his depth and range as both a humorist and a satirist; and it is this darkly acerbic wit that underlines the central narrative strands of The Singing Detective.Some would argue that this is the best that television has to offer, though I would politely disagree. The Singing Detective is a work of art too good to be considered simply for television. Now, thanks to the magic of DVD we have the chance to experience Potter's classic in its definitive unabridged, unedited, uninterrupted from. A truly great piece of work.

lionel-libson-1 Dennis Potter's "Singing Detective" in its 1986 TV production, surpasses standard definitions of dramatic entertainment. It amazingly integrates cultural fragments and memories with unequaled acting performance(Michael Gambon), giving full-dimensional life and impact to a form pioneered by Joyce, but with a soul and involvement of the senses far beyond "Ulysses".Although it has a plus 6 hour running time, we are left with a desire to continue sharing the company of this incredibly complex man. No other book, movie, etc. has so completely affected me as a work of art.The visuals of this production perfectly match the "mindworld" of Marlow as he struggles with agonizing disease, childhood memories and the birth pangs of artistic creation.

cubpilot54 Episode one, if it can truly be identified as such, was enough to drive me away from the rest of the DVD. The plot is convoluted, confusing, frequently silly, and appears to be going noplace. After all, who needs to see the same scene (a body pulled from the river)three, or was it four, times? . After sixty or seventy minutes there was still no substance to characters or plot, nor a single person I would care to spend another ten minutes watching, nor any indication that things would improve (especially Mr. Gambon's skin condition). There was so much filler just to use up air time (?)...skin rubs, Physician's rounds, hospital ward banter, etc., that the main story line was neglected for minutes on end. Finally episode one ended, I slipped the DVD back into its sleeve, settled down with a good book. Hmmm...wonder wher I can sell a mint condition set of "Singing Detective" DVDs?

tedg Spoilers herein.I have been without a TeeVee for thirty years. It is a standing challenge to my friends to show me something that is produced for TeeVee that does less harm than good in working with the viewer's mind.I finally have it here. Lynch's `Twin Peaks' experiment came close, but turned into a comment on the empty soul of TeeVee as the basic material was passed from one director to another, each trapped by different restrictions in the medium. Lynch finally had to `fix' it by making a wrapper film that brilliantly references those bounds.What we have here is something that spreads out and takes time to percolate. It is designed to coherently be delivered in small discrete parts. I saw it on DVD but can imagine it not being destroyed by those pesky interruptions and the delay between broadcasts.The idea is pretty complex for TeeVee: five levels of narrative, three in story, one in reference and one in a particularly strong use of song as narrative. This last is so novel and different from the conventions of artificial reality we've come to expect in musicals that it alone makes it interesting.The nominal base level is Marlow the writer in a hospital. He has a story that was written, is being written and rewritten and adapted. It is also what we see.Above these two levels is the explicit recognition that Potter, the `real' writer is Marlow, the fictional writer. This is wisely not introduced in any meaningful way until the 4th episode, including the notion that the characters at all levels are in control.Below these three levels is the story of his `murder' of his mother, his own `detection' and the ghosts of character.Permeating all is that fifth level, narrative assembled and saturated by popular song. Some characters and actors, even gestures and props (like that one shoe) appear in all five levels. Redheads are used in a particular clever way. (A project with similar tone and aspirations was "Draughtsman's Contract" which inspired Potter and which also features Janet Suzman.)But as time goes on, we can see that each level struggles to be the generator of the others. Particularly sweet is the notion that the singing detective can sing and think at the same time and what we see at all levels is what he thinks. Over time it becomes more viable to see the situation in any one layer as written (or imagined) in any other. Along the way he provides clear tools for doing so.The interesting thing here is that Potter uses the time of the miniseries format wisely. He introduces a new layer or idea or narrative folding in each half hour. Only so fast as we can adapt. He uses the same material over and over, but always in a new context. It is exactly anti-TeeVee in this way as TeeVee depends on a consistency of context as frame. Here, the frame shifts, and the whole point of the context is to provide levers for that shifting.That's what the detective story is all about: starting with events and locating a frame. And why it revolutionized literature. Too bad the appearance of this didn't revolutionize TeeVee.I haven't yet seen the 2003 film version, with the amazing Downey as Marlow. But it seems that this exploration in causal frames needs time to stretch, because one of Potter's tricks is to use the fact that his scope exceeds that we normally swallow in a 90 minute film experience.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.