The Singing Detective: the British masterpiece that changed TV forever

Blurring the line between reality and fiction, the narrative unfolds in several parallel worlds, with the noir-inspired detective story interwoven with Marlow’s real-life struggles in hospital, his own childhood and a variety of incidents in his life over which he feels the guilt. As Marlow begins to recover, his writer’s block eases; the fantasies allow him a creative escape as well as catharsis over several traumas, past and present, all aided by the optimistic presence of Nurse Mills (Joanne Whalley) who looks after Marlowe’s health in spite of his consistent grumblings.

Potter’s drama smuggled in its complexities via an incredibly skilful and entertaining melding of autobiography (Marlow’s illness, for example, directly matched Potter’s own health struggles) and a daring approach to form. Potter was one of television’s great stylists, refusing to bow to pressure to play drama straight, instead fragmenting it, following his own idiosyncratic obsessions, and, most famously, allowing access to the interiority of his characters via song-and-dance numbers (usually lip-synced to pre-war jazz of various kinds).    

Culmination of creativity

The Singing Detective was arguably the culmination of Potter’s creativity, building on themes he originally explored in his debut novel Hide and Seek (1973), as well as bringing in material and stylistic quirks from the writer’s long and varied career, in particular honing the lip-syncing scenes first properly deployed in Pennies from Heaven (1978). In other words, the drama had huge ambition and a plethora of ideas to carefully balance.   

Discussing the play in 2013 at the British Film Institute, Gambon recalled dealing with its complexity. “It was so vast in my mind,” he told Samira Ahmed, “so long and complicated, that every morning Jon [Amiel, the director of the series] would help me go through it.” Gambon’s performance is the drama’s backbone, his brilliant dual role an effective stabilising factor among the constant shifts between dream, memory and reality. It unsurprisingly earned him a Bafta for best actor in 1987.