A Great TV Script Writer.

Let's hear it for a great script writer! He concentrated on television and consequently became the most innovative writer for television so far.

One or two of his scripts were made in to movies, and I know one was produced in the theatre, but they never surpassed their television versions.

I was thinking about him the other day, when James Gandolfini died, as people reckon The Sopranos was the greatest television series of all time.

Well first of all there's no such thing; what you might think is great I might think is garbage – and vise versa.

I know a few Italians who don't like the Sopranos at all which figures.

They don't see Italians as the mafia or always in waste disposal. It's a bit like my mother hating the Irish series 'My Mammy' because it was too broad– I don't know what she would have made of Mrs Brown's Boys!!

The script writer I am talking about, of course, is Dennis Potter.

He tried to direct one of his own scripts, once, and it didn't quite work, even though his scripts had plenty of direction written in to them – yes that's right maybe he didn't know how to direct actors! Or did he?

His forays into film were The Singing Detective (with Robert Downey Jr), Pennies from Heaven (with Steve Martin) and his play Son of Man was eventually performed on stage and was about Christ.

I remember one of his TV plays Blue Remembered Hills where he had a group of grown up actors play children. Another play, with Tom Bell, was about an angel – or was he? A play a couple of years later was about a playwright writing a play about a man who thought he was an angel!

He wrote many scripts about delusional people and the most famous was Brimstone and Treacle which was made by the BBC and then banned by them. It was about the devil – or a man who said he was the devil (another delusional) - who had sex with the daughter of a family with whom he was staying.

It was made into a movie with Sting playing the lead and I am reliably informed it wasn't a patch on the original BBC version which was shown on the BBC some years later with some cuts. The original uncut version starring Michael Kitchen is available on Amazon and I've ordered a copy.

It also stars that great actor Denholm Elliot who was the best actor in many many films; he was in another Dennis Potter TV play called Follow the Yellow Brick Road, where he played an actor who was well known for doing a TV commercial with a dog and, as he was having some kind of nervous breakdown, he kept seeing the dog as he went about his way.

If ever you get the chance to see the DVD of The Singing Detective you may change your mind about what is the best television series – no car chases, guns or fights just a man in a bed in hospital and the inside of his head.