Rating: 
Summary: Over-rated
Review: One has to wonder what the Chicago Sun Times reviewer was thinking of when he described this series as the greatest production in the history of television. A horribly burned man in a hospital has flashbacks about his life. While the flashbacks often are interesting, the hospital scenes involve a lot of trivial by-play that must be more appealing to Britons than to Americans. 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Musically and Dramatically without peer
Review: Delicious interweaving of memory, delirium, music, fiction, illness, paranoia, love. See other reviews for details. Even better with each viewing. Will now buy the DVD edition since I am afraid our VHS tapes will break one of these days. "Lipstick on Your Collar" is another stellar Potter product. Too bad "Karaoke" isn't available commercially (Maybe someday?)
Rating:
Summary: AMAZING!!!
Review: They dont make many mini-series very often anymore. What would be the point? The Singing Detective would make them all look like an independent film by a drunk university flunkie. I saw this Masterpeice when i was 14. My parents loved it, and i was just confused. The only thing i liked was the Hallucanations of the Grumpy Man in the bed. Now that i am a little older(29), and have seen a lot more crap on TV and in the theater, i have a better feel for what good entertainment is. I assure you that there is nothing better than this story. Phillip Marlowe is an author of pulp novels, an avid smoker and is a very sick man. He has to lie in bed in a sick ward of a hospital whose clientel would be more at hokme in an asylum. The staff is not much better. If this were not bad enough for our hero, he suffered from many hallucinations. Some are from his childhood, others from his present life, and many involving fictional characters created by him. Somewhere in his fevered dreaming the veil between reality and fiction is peirced, and people from his "real life" start interfering with his fictional characters. This show can become confusing at first, but given time, (its 6 wonderful hours long), it will all come clear. This show is much like a good book; a person must dedicate the time, and the anticipation will be great,but in the end it will leave you very satisfied. Buy this DVD and let the Singing Detective sing for you, but dont just save it for a rainy day, its too magical for that....
Rating:
Summary: flawless
Review: i was lucky enough to see this series on PBS when it debuted in the US. it haunted me for years. when i learned it was available on dvd, i bought it immediately. i had forgotten so much that makes this one of the most brilliant, insightful, inspired works of the last 50 years, in any visual media. the acting is awe-inspiring, the writing and plotting are breath-taking, the range of potter's imagination and insight are humbling. the other reviewers have covered this work's brilliance and effect better than i can. i am just adding my bit to encourage anyone who may have stumbled on this listing without knowing about this series to BUY IT RIGHT NOW. will it change your life? very possibly. will it stretch your mind and change your outlook? oh, yes. will it entertain you? without interruption. and i empathize completely with the reviewer who yearns for the bbc version (with bob hoskins) of potter's 'pennies from heaven.' maybe amazon could drop a hint? just one small bit of information to another reviewer: 'rosenkrantz and guildernstern are dead' was written by tom stoppard about 20 years before 'the singing detective.' and the film version edited out some very moving speeches.
Rating:
Summary: Best miniseries for television ever?
Review: The Singing Detective may be the best miniseries that ever appeared on television (please note that I'm not counting Fawlty Towers as a miniseries). Dennis Potter got everything right when he wrote this one. As the back of the boxset says it is "A gripping murder mystery!" "A lavish musical" "An intense psychological thriller" and "A warped romance". How can it be all these things? Because Potter was a genius! He managed to interweave several stories into one. And not one of them seems like a subplot, they all stand on their own. As an independent filmmaker I wish I had the ability to create something as fantastic as this series. If you watch this you won't be able to stop even though it is several hours long. And it will leave you wanting more. All I can say about that is get more of Potter's work. Which ones you ask? They're all good even if by varying degrees.
Rating:
Summary: The Singing Detective
Review: Early in the history of television there were projects that resembled unrestrained theater production more than what we know of as television today. The Singing Detective is a high point in this unrestrained theater of the tube. What television can be when it isn't creating programming for the masses and solely concerned with selling as much commercial air time as possible is demonstrated in The Singing Detective. This masterpiece comes from one of the more obsessive and introspective minds that ever wrote for television, Dennis Potter. This work is not for everyone. It is extreme in many regards and it's use of language and sexuality would - and did - exclude it from American commercial broadcast and only a few PBS stations ever aired the 6-part work in its entirety. A journey into the mind of its creator as portrayed by the great Michael Gambon, The Singing Detective is a detective story of the mind. A tale of multiple stories that begin to intertwine and commingle until we are compelled to complete the journey - not for the sake of knowing whodunit but for the sake of finding our own sanity within the mind of the protagonist, Philip Marlowe. A rare gem and truly a work of genius that, if you seek the edge of expression and not the mainstream, will be a centerpiece in any DVD collection.
Rating:
Summary: perfect as it stands
Review: The Singing Detective, in my humble opinion, is probably one of the best collaborations of screenwriting, direction and casting, ever put to film...either tv or movies. To me that is a given. A more sensitive portrayal of one man's life and life-long struggle to reconcile the loss of his parents, could not be written or filmed. This is a brilliant story of a Welsh-born author/philosopher that has, in this simple televison format, been done to perfection....it is not a story of a Jewish mal-content drug addict, as will probably be the Hollyweird remake, coming out this fall(what's next?...a new Citizen Kane?). Boycott the pathetic remake,and spend the $$ for the original teleplay...and enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: Worth every dollar
Review: I hesitated buying this set because $ is a lot of money. The positive reviews tempted me, but I thought they might be motivated by a small cult following of Dennis Potter. Well, I guess I am now joining the "cult." This is a terrific series. There's not much I can add to the other reviews except to say that despite the various layers of the "plot," the film is not all that difficult to follow. The central figure moves from the present to the past to his fictional world and back--with one character (Finny/Binny) running the gamut of this spectrum. The film captures rather well the way one's mind works as it gather clues to its own identity. Michael Gambon is the perfect actor for this production. The actor who played his father is also remarkable. One of the most moving scenes is in the tavern where the young Marlow is drinking a soda and listening to his father sing and perform bird songs. Now, if only the BBC would wake up and offer Pennies from Heaven in DVD, or even VHS!!!
Rating:
Summary: with weaknesses and virtues
Review: a deep study of human psyche; very good director, actors,
costumes; unfortunately a poor script.
Rating:
Summary: Five Stars+
Review: A fine collection from BBC. A
pleasure to watch so I had to buy and I don't often buy DVDs.
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