The Singing Detective

Rating:
Summary: Gut-wrenching mystery
Review: A Phillip Marlow tale with vintage WWII scenes, The Singing Detective gives viewers weird characters and off-beat humor in a movie with, thank goodness, a great plot...plus music! This is a story within a story, full of strange twists: a corpse IDd as at least 3 different women, a mysterious mental (or is it physical?) illness, jilted lovers, and a couple of incredibly inept hit men. Wonderful BBC film that has already stood the test of time.

Rating:
Summary: Heartrending - compelling - brilliant - THE BEST EVER
Review: For some years, I've been bending my friends' ears about "The Singing Detective". I entirely concur with those other reviewers who called it the greatest television production of all time. Potter used everything he had, most notably the long running time of the series, to create a one-of-a-kind masterwork that may never be topped. I've visited London many times since first seeing TSD, and every time I'm in the Tube, I find myself looking towards the tunnel entrance and hearing, "PHILLLLLLIIPPPP!!!" Aside from that, Michael Gambon may have many years of brilliant performances left in him, but this will be his monument. Robert Downey Jr., indeed. It is to laugh.

Release this film on DVD now! Are you listening, BBC Films? Give it to Criterion and let them do the job they do best - give us a "Singing Detective" set on DVD with a ton of extra material on Dennis Potter, too!

If you haven't seen this, drop what you're doing and order it. You definitely won't regret it.

Rating:
Summary: Potter and Lynch?
Review: I often see Dennis Potter's work compared to David Lynch's, so I'll weigh in: Dennis Potter was the artist that David Lynch wants to be when he grows up. Potter knew how to bring bizarre and even grotesque elements into the service of his story in a way that Lynch tried to do in "Twin Peaks," with uneven results. In Potter's work, every jarring image and odd tangent has a job to do. When you see, for example, an entire hospital ward break into a minstrel version of "Dem Bones," you can assume it reflects the protagonist's view of the British health care system. (Plus, it's hilarious.) If Lynch meant for us to learn something from the backwards-talking midget in "Twin Peaks," well, it went over my head. Potter's screenplay for "The Singing Detective" is funny, unsettling, heartbreaking, sweet and maddening, often all at once.

"The Singing Detective" may not play well in Fort Wayne: it's true, this isn't "Touched By An Angel." (Neither is it "Irreversible," by the way: you have to be pretty thin-skinned (so to speak) to find this material genuinely offensive.) But if you believe that art can be both shocking and thrilling, can provoke as it evokes, can and should take outrageous risks in order to take us someplace completely new, then you've got to find a way to see this series. If you love words, if you appreciate originality, if you want to see acting that ranges from excellent to relevatory, then rent or borrow "The Singing Detective." Once you've seen it, you'll want to own it.

Rating:
Summary: The play's the thing....
Review: THE SINGING DETECTIVE is a compelling, funny, and heart wrenching mystery starring Michael Gambon as Phillip Marlowe: writer, protagonist, and hospital patient. Patrick Malahyde (Middlemarch) flawlessly plays Marlowe's nemesis (nemeses)-three different characters with three different British accents. The cast also includes Janet Suzman as wife, lover and vamp; Alison Steadman (Mrs. Bennet in the recent production of 'Pride and Prejudice') as wife, mother, lover, and vamp (Marlene Dietrich lookalike), Joanne Whalley (ex-Kilmer) as nurse, etc.; and the housekeeper from the BBC television series 'As Time Goes By' as the school teacher from your worst nightmare.

In addition to the superb cast and wonderful settings filled with vintage WWII elements, one can watch 'The Singing Detective' for the pure entertainment provided by a convoluted plot, quirky characters, musical segments, and many humourous moments. One of my favorite scenes occurs when Marlowe responds to the ministrations of a group of Christians who attempt to impose their musical doctrine on the hapless ward patients. Another angle for viewing this film is provided by the drama of Marlowe's medical condition. Is it mental, physical or both? Will he improve or not? Will the psychiatrist be able to break through his defenses or is he defenseless? A third avenue for exploring the film is the depiction of the creative writing process. How do Marlowe's characters take form? What is the source of his plot elements? How much does he remember and how much does he imagine? Can one find the line between fiction and nonfiction.

Probably the most interesting angle from my perspective is the parallel between the Singing Detective and Shakespeare's Hamlet: the play within a play within a play (the play's the thing); the dead Ophelia floating in the Thames (who is she anyway-at least three different women turn up as the same corpse); the different 'ghosts' who haunt the protagonist; unfaithful and spurned lovers; and two nameless hit men who try to assassinate the hero over and over from the beginning to the end of the story. I believe this BBC production (1986) must have inspired many of the deconstructed and now classic plays and films produced in the 1990s including 'L.A. Confidential'; Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead'; 'Pulp Fiction'; Reservoir Dogs'; 'The Spanish Prisoner'; 'Mulholland Drive'; and others.

Rating:
Summary: Well Deserved Praise - A Masterpiece
Review: Like all great masterpieces of television and film, "The Singing Detective" is not simple, one-dimensional, or thin-plotted. It is vastly complicated and often strange with it's several interwoven stories that reach monumental heights of suspense and intrigue. I say this because I have read too many reviews from people who stopped watching after the first or second episodes.

For my part, I barely understood anything at all until nearly half way through the series when all the pieces started coming together. As you get further along more is revealed to you, and thus the more rewarding each episode becomes. It is sad that American movies and television have sapped not only the intellectual substance right out of it's audience, but apparently the patience as well. Of course it is strange and confusing...it is a detective story! You aren't supposed to understand everything from the first frame.

So, for anyone who can sit still for more than twenty minutes without computer generated monkeys attacking exploding trucks or whatever makes it's way to the theatres these days, I strongly recommend spending a few days immersed in this fascinating mini-series.

Rating:
Summary: Unbelievably good.
Review: Marred only by it's curiously rushed ending. You need to stick with this because the story and its complexity grows slowly through the first few episodes. What it becomes is a complicated psychological thriller intertwined with hallucinations, a detective story and the goings on of the hospital ward denizens around our protagonist. Philip Marlow is revealed as a highly sensitive shell-shocked man residing within the physical body of an angry severe psoriasis patient. His return to humanity is the story that is detailed. This is a film for adults in the best sense of the word, exploring the complexities of what it means to have the accumulated experiences and wisdom that only come with time.
Excellent. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Well Deserved Praise - A Masterpiece
Review: Like all great masterpieces of television and film, "The Singing Detective" is not simple, one-dimensional, or thin-plotted. It is vastly complicated and often strange with it's several interwoven stories that reach monumental heights of suspense and intrigue. I say this because I have read too many reviews from people who stopped watching after the first or second episodes.

For my part, I barely understood anything at all until nearly half way through the series when all the pieces started coming together. As you get further along more is revealed to you, and thus the more rewarding each episode becomes. It is sad that American movies and television have sapped not only the intellectual substance right out of it's audience, but apparently the patience as well. Of course it is strange and confusing...it is a detective story! You aren't supposed to understand everything from the first frame.

So, for anyone who can sit still for more than twenty minutes without computer generated monkeys attacking exploding trucks or whatever makes it's way to the theatres these days, I strongly recommend spending a few days immersed in this fascinating mini-series.

Rating:
Summary: overhyped
Review: would have been better at half
the length and half the price

Rating:
Summary: maybe not the best thing ever on TV, but still great
Review: This series is exceptionally well written and acted and definitely worth watching if you're a fan of Dennis Potter. Fans of David Lynch, Philip K Dick, and British TV Dramas in general (particularly stuff like "I Claudius" and "Elizabeth R") should find something to like here, though I don't think liking any of the above is a prerequisite to liking this.

michael_michaud from Dulles, VA, USA wrote in an earlier review:
"... A horribly burned man in a hospital has flashbacks about his life. ... The camera always comes back to the scarred, oozing face and body of the detective. People who enjoy such images either have not been confronted with them in real life, or have a taste for the grotesque. ..."

The man in the hospital (played by Michael Gambon), who bears the loaded name of Philip E. Marlow, was neither burned nor a detective. He was a writer and sufferer of an extreme and debilitating form of psoriasis, much like the screenwriter Dennis Potter was.

I don't want to spoil anything, so I won't go into much detail, but I really enjoyed this.

Rating:
Summary: Be Careful, Very Overated
Review: A warning to those thinking of purchasing this DVD. I purchased it on the basis of the glowing reviews posted here. Reviews that called this flawless, brilliant, the greatest TV program ever, etc. I confess that I only watched 2 episodes before putting this one away. It is extremely disturbing. The imagery in it is grotesque, potentialy offensive, and deeply disturbing. If you are a viewer who considers anything gross that pushes the boundries of acceptability art, then you will like this show. But if you are not entertained by depressing and disturbing images and topics, stay away from this one. Many people found the movie Silence of the Lambs about a murderous cannibal "brilliant and entertaining." If you loved Silence of the Lambs you will probably love this too. Otherwise think twice before buying this title.