Dennis Potter Filmography

Karaoke

Crew: Screenwriter, Teleplay By

Actors: Albert Finney, Richard E. Grant, Julie Christie, Alison Steadman, Hywel Bennett

Synopsis: The line between reality and fiction becomes increasingly blurred as an ailing screenwriter struggles with a story that seems to come to life before his eyes. A self-destructive loaner whose battle with pancreatic cancer has left him embittered and in great pain, Daniel Feeld (Albert Finney) Read More

Cold Lazarus

Crew: Play Author, Screenwriter

Actors: Frances de la Tour, Grant Masters, Albert Finney, Ciarán Hinds, Ganiat Kasumu

Midnight Movie

Crew: Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Jim Carter, Louise Germaine, Brian Dennehy, Anna Cropper, Steven Mackintosh

Synopsis: This British parody is the last film of famed television writer Dennis Potter. The story centers upon a terribly tacky British horror film "Smoke Rings," which featured the screaming talents of the ambitious, sexy model and starlet Mandy Mason, who mysteriously died soon after the film was Read More

Mesmer

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Alan Rickman, Amanda Ooms, Gillian Barge, Jan Rubes

Synopsis: This historical drama is based on the true story of controversial medical pioneer Franz Anton Mesmer. In 18th century Vienna, Mesmer (Alan Rickman) believes that many of the favored medical treatments of the day -- most notoriously the inducement of bleeding to remove harmful "humors" from the Read More

Dennis Potter: The Last Interview

Actors: Dennis Potter

Synopsis: British writer Dennis Potter, author of The Singing Detective and Pennies From Heaven, has been called the "authentic wild man of British television" and his works are known for being filled with complicated characters and challenging subjects. After receiving a diagnosis of advanced pancreatic Read More

Lipstick on Your Collar

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Giles Thomas, Louise Germaine, Ewan McGregor, Peter Jeffrey, Douglas Henshall

Synopsis: Set in 1956 during the Suez crisis, this Dennis Potter-scripted musical comedy is about two young British servicemen, Francis Francis (Giles Thomas) and Mick Hopper (Ewan McGregor), stationed as Russian translators at the War Office. Francis, who stays with his aunt and uncle, develops a crush on Read More

Secret Friends

Crew: Book Author, Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Alan Bates, Gina Bellman, Frances Barber, Tony Doyle, Joanna David

Synopsis: During a train ride, an anxiety attack leads middle-aged illustrator John into an identity crisis. As his marital problems merge and blur into his fantasy life with prostitutes and call girls, a long-dormant secret friend of his childhood surfaces in his delusions. Potter viewed John as "a victim Read More

Blackeyes

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Michael Gough, Carol Royle, Gina Bellman, Nigel Planer

Synopsis: In this intricately layered, dark story, a woman whose guardian sexually abused her tells her story. It seems that her guardian also used her life as the basis for a series of stories about a woman known as Blackeyes. The real-life woman and the fictional woman each tell their stories, while Read More

Christabel

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Elizabeth Hurley, Stephen Dillone

Synopsis: A BBC production, Christabel was one of several British TV iniseries seen during the 1988-89 season of the PBS anthology series Masterpiece Theatre. Dennis Potter adapted the teleplay from Christabel Bielenberg's autobiography The Past is Myself. Elizabeth Hurley plays Christabel, a British woman Read More

Track 29

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Theresa Russell, Gary Oldman, Sandra Bernhard, Christopher Lloyd, Colleen Camp

Synopsis: A dissatisfied woman encounters a mysterious stranger who may be her long-lost son in this peculiar, darkly comic drama. Theresa Russell plays the deeply disappointed Linda Henry, who feels stifled by a strained marriage to Dr. Henry Henry (Christopher Lloyd), who pays more attention to his model Read More

The Singing Detective

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Michael Gambon, Patrick Malahide, Janet Suzman, Alison Steadman, Jim Carter

Synopsis: With the notable exception of Pennies From Heaven, The Singing Detective was the best-known TV miniseries project of the iconoclastic, darkly humored Dennis Potter. A reworking of Potter's first novel Hide and Seek, the six-part series starred Michael Gambon as crime novelist Philip E. Marlow. Read More

Dreamchild

Crew: Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Coral Browne, Ian Holm, Peter Gallagher, Nicola Cowper, Caris Corfman, Amelia Shankley

Synopsis: Irreverent British writer Dennis Potter speaks aloud what many literary historians have only postulated in whispers in Dreamchild. The film is set in 1932, on the 100th anniversary of the birth of Alice in Wonderland creator Lewis Carroll. The guest of honor at the New York-based celebration is Read More

Tender is the Night

Crew: Screenwriter

Synopsis: First filmed theatrically in 1962, F. Scott Fitzgerald's final novel, Tender Is the Night, was given a lavish (seven million dollars) treatment in this British-Australian-American miniseries version. Set in Europe's waning days of the Roaring Twenties, the plot focused upon the tempestuous Read More

Gorky Park

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: William Hurt, Lee Marvin, Brian Dennehy, Ian Bannen, Joanna Pacula

Synopsis: In the dead of a Moscow winter, three bodies are found in Gorky Park. Police Inspector Renko (William Hurt) is unable to identify the corpses, since even their fingerprints have removed. For reasons unknown to him, Renko's investigation is somehow being stymied by his higher-ups. Ferreting out Read More

Brimstone and Treacle

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Sting, Denholm Elliott, Joan Plowright, Suzanna Hamilton

Synopsis: The arrival of a mysterious stranger disrupts the lives of the members of a British family in this dark, psychological thriller. The stranger is one Martin Taylor (Sting), a dangerous charmer who ingratiates himself with the Bateses, a dignified, older couple (Denholm Elliott and Joan Plowright). Read More

Pennies from Heaven

Crew: Screen Story, Screenwriter

Actors: Steve Martin, Bernadette Peters, Christopher Walken, Jessica Harper

Synopsis: Adapted from Dennis Potter's landmark British TV miniseries and relocated to the United States during the Depression, Pennies from Heaven dramatizes how popular songs both shaped and reflected the thoughts of people living through economic (and emotional) hardship. Arthur Parker (Steve Martin) is Read More

Deep Cover

Crew: Play Author, Screenwriter

Actors: Donald Pleasence, Tom Conti, Denholm Elliott, Kika Markham, Phoebe Nicholls

Synopsis: In this Dennis Potter-scripted TV film, Donald Pleasence plays Jason Cavendish, a retired Cambridge professor, who lives in a remote country estate with his second wife (Kika Markham), his daughter (Phoebe Nicholls), and his butler/secretary/confidant (Denholm Elliott). Their sleepy routine is Read More

Blue Remembered Hills

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Helen Mirren

Synopsis: The title derives from A.E. Housman's 1896 poem: "Into my heart an air that kills; From yon far country blows; What are those blue remembered hills . . ." On a sunny, summer afternoon in 1943, seven children (two girls, five boys) play in the hills, fields, and forests of bucolic England. They Read More

The Mayor of Casterbridge

Crew: Screenwriter

Synopsis: Originally telecast by the BBC from January 22 to March 5, 1978, The Mayor of Casterbridge was a seven-part adaptation of the novel by Thomas Hardy. Alan Bates played the title character, Michael Henchard, the wealthy and popular mayor of the Wessex community of Casterbridge. Things had not always Read More

Pennies From Heaven

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Hywel Bennett, Kenneth Colley, Gemma Craven, Bob Hoskins

Synopsis: Not to be confused with Herbert Ross' 1981 remake starring Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters, the highly acclaimed British television miniseries Pennies from Heaven was the breakthrough work of acclaimed screenwriter Dennis Potter, a rich drama set in 1930s London that uses popular songs as both Read More

Brimstone and Treacle

Crew: Screenwriter

Synopsis: One of the most controversial works by author Dennis Potter, best known for Pennies from Heaven and The Singing Detective, the searing drama Brimstone and Treacle centers around the heavily troubled Bates family. The marriage between Mr. and Mrs. Bates is rocky, and both are suffering under the Read More

Late Call

Crew: Screenwriter

Synopsis: Adapted by the estimable Dennis Potter from the 1964 novel by Angus Wilson, the British miniseries Late Call starred veteran character actress Dandy Nichols as Sylvia Calvert, a lifelong employee of a seaside hotel. Upon her retirement, Sylvia and her ex-soldier husband Arthur (Leslie Dwyer) moved Read More

The Sextet

Crew: Screenwriter

Synopsis: The title of this BBC anthology had a double meaning. Each of the series' eight 50-minute episodes featured the same six actors, and each dealt with the delicate topic of sex. The series' facile repertory company included veterans Denholm Elliot, Billie Whitelaw, and Richard Vernon, while the Read More

Traitor

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: John Le Mesurier

Synopsis: This British made-for-television drama tells the story of an English spy living abroad. John Le Mesurier stars as Adrian Harris, an English diplomat who trades loyalties and becomes a Russian spy. Harris escapes to Moscow after his covert activity is uncovered and he lives in exile, until some Read More

A Beast with Two Backs

Crew: Screenwriter