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The Making of Artistic Reputation: Dennis Potter, Television Dramatist
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 March 2009
Abstract
Within the context of canonization processes, the career course of the British television dramatist Dennis Potter presents a unique case. Potter's career illustrates an instance of a dramatist also acting as a multifunctional media figure, who superseded the ‘typical’ primary makers of reputation (e.g. critics and academics) in shaping the perceptions of his work and in promoting his dramatic standing. Potter's authoritative power was facilitated by the infancy of television reviewing and television drama in the early 1960s. Given the innovative nature of his dramas, often extremely controversial, the reputation he achieved was largely the effect of his acquired fame as a media figure and, particularly, the evaluative criteria he himself established as a pioneering television critic: an expertise he further exploited as major commentator on his own work, all of which not only conditioned the reception of his works, but also influenced their eventual critical acclaim.
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References
NOTES
1 About Potter's achieved reputation ‘as the first “great” television writer’, critically acclaimed in the 1980s, see Coward, Rosalind, ‘Dennis Potter and the Question of the Television Author’, Critical Quarterly, 29, 4 (1987), pp. 79–87, here p. 83CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
2 On the primary role of critics and academics in the careers of John Osborne, John Arden and Harold Pinter, and the positions assumed by these playwrights in the mediation of their work, see Zarhy-Levo, Yael, The Making of Theatrical Reputations: Studies from the Modern London Theatre (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. There are additional cases of prominent playwrights who also acted as critics and used their critical authority, albeit differently, to enhance their dramatic careers, notably George Bernard Shaw.
3 On the evolution of television drama in Britain see Brandt, George, ‘Introduction’, in Brandt, George, ed., British Television Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 1–35Google Scholar.
4 In 1970, when the series broadcast day was shifted to Thursday, its title was altered to Play for Today. On the Armchair Theatre and the Wednesday Play see Shubik, Irene, Play for Today: The Evolution of Television Drama (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000; first published 1975), pp. 9–16, 41–63Google Scholar.
5 In 1965 Potter won the Writers Guild Award and in 1966 the Society of Film and Television Arts Award.
6 Does Class Matter?, programme 2 ‘Class in Private Life’, interviewer Christopher Mayhew MP, producer Jack Ashley. Broadcast on BBC television, 25 August 1958. The interview followed his article ‘Base Ingratitude?’ (about ‘Welfare State Oxford’) published in the New Statesman (3 May 1958).
7 Hoggart, Richard, himself a beneficiary of the scholarship granted to working-class children, discusses its implications in his key book The Uses of Literacy (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1957)Google Scholar. Hoggart comments on the bias towards male students that is indeed reflected in the term ‘scholarship boy’.
8 On Potter's views on the topic, the interview and the responses it elicited see Creeber, Glen, ‘The Anxious and the Uprooted: Dennis Potter and Richard Hoggart, Scholarship Boys’, in Grass, Vernon W. and Cook, John R., eds., The Passion of Dennis Potter: International Collected Essays (Houndmills: Macmillan Press, 2000), pp. 31–9, here pp. 33–4Google Scholar.
9 On television critics at the end of the 1950s see Elliot, Michael, ‘Television Drama: The Medium and the Predicament’, Encore, 4, 13 (1959), pp. 30–7Google Scholar.
10 The first TV critics attributed the ‘invention’ of the new profession to Peter Black, writing for the Daily Mail.
11 See Philip Purser, ‘Dennis's Other Hat’, in Grass and Cook, The Passion of Dennis Potter, pp. 179–80.
12 On the practice of television criticism during these early days, see Purser, ‘Dennis's Other Hat’, p. 180.
13 Dennis Potter, Daily Herald, 8 September 1962.
14 For elaboration see Purser, ‘Dennis's Other Hat’, pp. 183.
15 Dennis Potter, review of The Road, Daily Herald, 11 April 1964.
16 Purser refers to Potter's review on 3 March 1964 in the Daily Herald.
17 See Purser, ‘Dennis's Other Hat’, p. 183.
18 See Dennis Potter, Sun, 25 January 1968.
19 See Purser, ‘Dennis's Other Hat’, p. 183.
20 According to Purser (‘Dennis's Other Hat’, p. 188), in the late 1970s Potter had ‘less cause to preach the kind of drama he wants to supply. An audience that has grown up with his plays accepts his narrative idiom without difficulty. New writers have adopted it, at lease to some degree. It has become the language of the screen’.
21 See, for example, Purser, ‘Dennis's Other Hat’, p. 189.
22 See Peter Stead's comment: ‘from the outset his expectations of the culture and of television had been couched in personal terms and what mattered more than anything was that he be allowed to communicate with an audience’. Stead, Peter, Dennis Potter (Bridgend Mid-Glamorgan: Seren Books, 1993), p. 47Google Scholar.
23 The career of Harold Pinter offers another (although different) example of a prominent dramatist involved, directly and indirectly, in the mediation of his drama. On the case of Pinter see Zarhy-Levo, The Making of Theatrical Reputations, pp. 161–208.
24 For the first citation see Adrian Mitchell, ‘Shouts and Murmurs’, Sunday Times, 12 December 1965. For the second see Julian Holland, ‘Unlucky Jim Finds Room at the Top’, Daily Mail, 11 December 1965.
25 See in particular Julian Holland, ‘Unlucky Jim Finds Room at the Top’. The critics' attempt to point out the thematic similarities between Potter's play and the novels exemplifies the ‘comparison strategy’, which is one of the major strategies employed by theatre reviewers when introducing a new dramatist. On the major strategies employed by theatre reviewers throughout the process of admitting a new playwright into the theatrical canon see Zarhy-Levo, Yael, The Theatrical Critic as Cultural Agent: Constructing Pinter, Orton and Stoppard as Absurdist Playwrights (New York: Peter Lang, 2001), pp. 95–106Google Scholar.
26 See Derek Malcolm, ‘Stand Up, Nigel Barton on BBC’, Guardian, 9 December 1965. See also Maince Richardson, review of Stand Up, Nigel Barton, Observer, 12 December 1965.
27 See, for example, the lead-in paragraph in John Wyver's article ‘The Long Non-revolution of Dennis Potter’ (1980), which reads, ‘almost alone among those working for television, Dennis Potter is widely recognized and discussed as a major artist. From the mid-60s on, when the first ‘Nigel Barton’ plays hit the screen, his work has always been among the most intelligent, the most searching and the most pertinent written for the medium. And mostly, from Son of Man [1969] to Pennies from Heaven [1978], to the banned Brimstone and Treacle and Blue Remembered Hills [1979], that work has been celebrated as such’. John Wyver, ‘The Long Non-revolution of Dennis Potter’, Time Out, 17 October 1980.
28 Moonlight on the Highway was broadcast in April 1969 by ITV (LWT London Weekend Television). The play was produced by Kenith Trodd, the dramatist's friend from his military service (1953–5) and Oxford days, and subsequently his close collaborator and the producer of his most renowned plays and serials. Trodd is considered one of the most successful British television drama producers. He also gained recognition as a producer of films, winning countless awards for many plays and films.
29 See Philip Purser, ‘A Manner of Speaking’, Sunday Telegraph, 13 April 1969.
30 William Marshall, ‘Expedition into a Man's Mind’, Daily Mirror, 14 April 1969. See also Peter Blade, review of Moonlight on the Highway, Daily Mail, 14 April 1969.
31 See Philip Purser's interview with Potter, ‘A Playwright Comes of Age’, Daily Telegraph Magazine, 2 April 1969, pp. 35–6.
32 N. Shervin, ‘Son of Man’, Observer, 20 April 1969.
33 In 1969 (1 November) another interview conducted with Potter was broadcast on television (BBC2), and in 1970 (February 20) Potter participated in another discussion, Any Questions, transmitted on BBC Radio 2.
34 Stephan W. Gilbert, ‘And Potter Created the Son’, Independent, 11 October 1995.
35 See Sean Day-Lewis, ‘Will the Devil Get His Dues?’, Daily Telegraph, 5 April 1976.
36 Minette Martin, review of Did You See It?, Daily Telegraph, 26 August 1987.
37 Martin Amis, ‘Potter Patter’, New Statesman, 9 April 1976.
38 Peter Knight, ‘Dennis Potter at His Tantalizing Best’, Daily Telegraph, 7 April 1976.
39 John Wyver, ‘Paradise, Perhaps’, Time Out, 3 March 1978, pp. 12–13, here p. 12.
40 Ray Connolly, ‘When the Penny dropped’, Evening Standard, 21 March 1978.
41 See Stead, Dennis Potter, p. 104.
42 John Wyver, for example, pointed out the play's crystal-clear plot, a rarity in Potter's television dramas. John Wyver, ‘How to Turn Difficulty into Child's Play’, Guardian, 26 January 1979. See also Patrick Stoddart, ‘How One Man Re-awakens Those Golden Days of Childhood’, Evening News, 30 January 1979, who suggested that ‘Blue Remembered Hills is the exact opposite of everything Potter achieved in the remarkable and intricate Pennies from Heaven’.
43 In his account on his own career as television critic, Purser amusingly remarks that he became ‘the world authority on Dennis Potter’, following the essay ‘Dennis Potter’ that he contributed to the anthology British Television Drama, upon the request of the editor, George Brandt. See Purser, Philip, Done Viewing (London: Quartet Books, 1992), p. 188Google Scholar.
44 See Purser, ‘Dennis Potter’, pp. 174–5. When citing the dramatist Purser refers to an interview Paul Madden had conducted with Potter, appearing in the programme to the season of British Television Drama held at the National Film Theatre in October 1976.
45 The serial elicited protestations as well. See the Times, ‘BBC Deny Sexy TV Storm’, 2 February 1986, p. 5.
46 See Potter, Dennis, ‘An Interview with Melvyn Bragg, Channel 4, April 1994’, in Seeing the Blossom (London: Faber and Faber, 1994), pp. 1–29, here p. 12Google Scholar.
47 Ibid., p. 15.
48 See, for example, studies by Cook, John R., Dennis Potter: A Life on Screen (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995)Google Scholar; Gilbert, Stephen W., Fight & Kick & Bite: The Life and Work of Dennis Potter (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1995)Google Scholar; Creeber, Glen, Dennis Potter: Between Two Worlds, A Critical Reassessment (London: Macmillan Press, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Carpenter, Humphrey, Dennis Potter: A Biography (London: Faber and Faber, 1998)Google Scholar.
49 Fuller, Graham, ed., Potter on Potter (London: Faber and Faber, 1993)Google Scholar; and Potter, ‘Interview with Melvyn Bragg’.