The Singing Detective

Re-working material from his first novel, “Hide and Seek” (1973), and folding this into a prismatic blend of autobiographical details, popular music and 1940s film noir, Writer Dennis Potter delivered a drama now regarded as a twentieth century masterwork. Detective novelist Philip Marlow (Sir Michael Gambon) suffers from the crippling disease of psoriatic arthritis. Confined to a hospital bed, Marlow mentally re-writes his early Chandleresque thriller, “The Singing Detective”, with him in the title role, drifting into a surreal 1945 fantasy of spies and criminals, along with vivid memories of a childhood in the Forest of Dean. As past events and 1940s songs surface in his subconscious, Marlow’s voyage of self-discovery provides a key to conquering his illness, while his noir-styled hallucinations evoke the Philip Marlowe of Chandler’s Murder, My Sweet (1944), starring Dick Powell, who later became a “singing detective” on radio’s “Richard Diamond, Private Detective” (1949), crooning to girlfriend Helen Asher at the end of each episode.