Lipstick on Your Collar (1993)

You've maybe already guessed by the cover that Lipstick is set in the 1950s, which means music plays an important role. Dennis Potter has a peculiar knack for making existing music and lyrics fit his narrative in unusual ways. He plays with them, opens them up and in doing so changes the intent in an often playfully ironic way. It's so successful that in the future when I hear many of the tracks used in the production I'll be smiling while thinking of the scenes they're attached to.

Of all the Potter TV Miniseries I've reviewed so far, Lipstick is my favourite for a number of reasons, the first of which is mentioned above.

There's also the top-class characterisation to consider, and the way some of the principals drift into their own fantasy realm when life bores or distresses them. In a few of the author's other works the fiction spills over into the reality, but here the reality becomes a part of the fiction; boring old farts who would rather be dead than caught dancing in their underwear are launched into spotlights to spin and twirl their stuffy stuff in a hilarious manner.

At the centre of a majority of the daydreams is Pte. Mick Hopper (Ewan McGregor), a clerk who's desperate for his national service term behind a translator's desk at the Foreign Office in Whitehall to end so that he can live life to the full.

The blonde girl is Sylvia Berry (Louise Germaine), the kind of beauty they paint on the side of bombers, but she's as common as muck when she talks. Nevertheless, a number of people are utterly besotted with her, which invariably leads to trouble.

The lives of workers and residents intertwine at various points along the timeline, deepening our understanding of their situation and even on occasion changing our opinion of them. There's occasional nudity and the politically incorrect notions of the era aren't overlooked, so folks that are easily offended probably will be.

6 episodes, approx 60 mins each.

4½ barely bloody drinkables out of 5

Dennis Potter’s Cold Lazarus (1996)

The second part of Potter's final work requires you to have seen all four episodes of the first part, Karaoke (HERE). I won't drop ruinous spoilers about CL's plot, but I'll need to refer to Karaoke, so please think carefully before reading anything beyond this point if you've any interest in watching Karaoke and have yet to do so.

As we saw previously, armed with the knowledge of his failing heath, Daniel Feeld prepared for the future of the people he felt close to. In contrast, the author was unprepared for what awaited him in his own future, 374 years after his death.

The introduction of cryogenics into Karaoke's plot may have seemed odd in isolation, but it makes sense when you consider CL. Scientists unearth the frozen remains of Daniel and plug him into a machine that translates activity in his brain into visual images that can be recorded and analysed by a people who've lost sight of what it means to be human. Their society is in chaos and, for reasons that aren't fully explained, their historical records are inadequate. They believe that memories of the past may help them better understand their present.

The fact that memory, being the subjective construct that it is, is an inherently unreliable source of information is addressed a little but not enough to build a foundation for the entire process to stand solidly on. Similar criticisms can be applied to various parts of CL's plot. At times its reach overextends the length of its component parts, and the whole suffers. When it isn't doing that, when it sticks to more relatable concerns, it explores the nature of free will and deepens our understanding of why Daniel was the person he was in Karaoke.

The scientists are an odd bunch, only a few of whom are any good at acting, but luckily it's those few that get the most screen time. They're at the mercy of a hedonistic evil bitch named Martina Masdon, played with zeal by Diane Ladd. Martina is one of the most memorable characters, and yet many of her scenes are largely superfluous. I'm unsure if that was a kind of commentary in itself, but I'm convinced that some of the subtext is purposefully imbalanced.

On the flip side, some views are so blatant that they're like a punch in the face. I can imagine the author having one final laugh as he contemplated the BBC's reaction to a story about a corporate attempt to control a dying writer's mind.

4 episodes, approx 50 minutes each.

3½ button pushers out of 5

Dennis Potter’s Karaoke (1996)

The first part of Potter's final work was broadcast two years after his death. He wrote it with the full knowledge that he was dying, which makes viewing it a deeply poignant experience. You might expect the situation to have pushed him towards tapping into the bleaker side of his talent, but there's a huge amount of darkly wry humour in the script. There's also a feeling that inevitability can't be conquered, so it should be thoroughly mocked instead, as best we can.

The main protagonist is a screenwriter named Daniel Feeld. Daniel, played with intensity by Albert Finney, is diagnosed with the same painful medical condition that killed Potter in real life, so it's fair to assume that it's at least partly autobiographical in nature. His most recent work is causing grief for both himself and the director of the TV adaptation (Richard E. Grant). It's fiction but, as is already established, fiction often has a modicum of reality in it.

When Daniel, in his real life, encounters people who resemble his written characters he begins to feel somehow responsible for what happens to them.

The director, the one filming Daniel's burgeoning fiction, is tethered to a single scene that repeats over and over for both him and us. As he struggles to make sense of it, the wider story and the parts each person plays within it, like we do in our actual lives everyday, begins to resonate more and more, driven forward by Daniel's need to prevent his words becoming someone else's reality.

The journey toward completion sends tendrils of consequence into the fates of everyone involved. The people at the centre of the drama obviously get it the worst, but even the ones on the periphery are affected.

I mentioned at the beginning that Karaoke is the first part of Potter's final work. The second part is Cold Lazarus (see HERE), which came out the same year.

4 episodes, approx 50 minutes each.

4 artistic temperaments out of 5

Blackeyes (1989)

Apologies for the blurry picture used above, but in some ways it emphasises a point about the availability of Dennis Potter’s 'Blackeyes' miniseries: no proper box art exists because it's been denied a commercial release. It's been hidden away in the BBC vaults for twenty-six years. An image search returns precious little other than a bootleg DVD and the covers of Potter’s original novel (1987) to work with, hence my crude cut-n-paste job from a VHS copy.

The story's typical of the author's work, which is to say it's a complex arrangement of layers presented in an unconventional, creative manner; a non-linear narrative that ebbs and flows; a sensual tide that takes as much as it gives.

The titular character is a representation of a writer’s fascination with his niece’s past profession, unattainable except in fiction. He takes parts from her time as a fashion model and creates a tragic, self-reflective, male fantasy that walks off the page. She's a sullied depiction of reality whose very existence taunts.

Her blank slate personality is being written and rewritten by more than one author at any one time, from various perspectives, including, but not limited to, ownership and revenge. Some of the character types are lifted piecemeal from other genres, further blurring the lines between what’s written and real, what’s imagined and what’s being or has already been lived. Nothing is simple.

The unseen narrator—the voice that critiques even itself—is the voice of Potter, uncredited in the role, but inherent, more than just a passive element in his own fairytale playground. The shifting voyeuristic and intimate commentaries are by turns enlightening and disturbing, but always controversial.

Potter was also the director, so the camera is his eye, a part of the space it helped create, moving god-like through it and inside of it. In that, he also excels.

Many critics of the era panned it. The need to label it as either misogynist or satirically damning of misogyny placed them on an uncomfortable fence. Perhaps they recognised elements of themselves in it or it highlighted their own slavish failings? It's even possible that the dislike was unconsciously fuelled by a sociopolitical consciousness change that was happening at the time. But most likely—in not having the benefit of hindsight that we have now—they simply didn't understand it. That's nothing of which to be ashamed. Achieving complete understanding isn't a prerequisite for viewing. I suspect Potter is the only one who ever really could've comprehended every daring facet of it.

4 episodes, approx 50 minutes each.

4 tangles of prose memories out of 5