Dennis Potter's Play for Today, Brimstone and Treacle was banned by the BBC and later became a film with pop star Sting playing the role of Martin Taylor.The banned play was later broadcast by the BBC allowing us to see what the controversy was all about. Potter wrote this as a religious parable and instead of thinking about the power of goodness, Potter thought what if the power of evil actually brought some happiness or sense of purpose.Michael Kitchen is the polite young man called Martin but in essence is the devil who visits a middle aged couple who look after their severely brain damaged daughter left that way after a car accident. He claims to be a friend of the daughter and stays on as a lodger.The father (Denholm Elliott) is a little man frustrated with life and is a racist. Of course once the devil suggests that we should kill them all, leave no black, brown, yellow people alive, he sorts of thinks twice about his racism and realises the implications of his hatred.The wife (Patricia Lawrence) is downtrodden with no life of her own looking after and bickering with her husband and caring for her daughter but the devil brings a little meaning to her life. As to the brain damaged daughter he cures her by attempting to rape her which is the element of the story that left the film unscreened for so many years and of course is the most disturbing especially as he wheels her around in anticipation of the dark deed.Kitchen is charming, infuriating and shady as Martin the devil incarnate. However despite the 1970s production values, Potter's writing shines through here and it is a play that makes you think.

I remember being extremely disturbed by this play on first seeing it twenty years ago, and it has not lost any of its power to shock. A young man, who we know right from the start to be the devil, coolly chooses his victim on the high street, foisting himself on the nervous and racist Mr Bates by his supposed friendship with Bates' handicapped daughter, Pattie. As the devil (here called Martin) Michael Kitchen is menacing and also very funny, while Denholm Elliott plays the father very well. Michelle Newell and Patricia Lawrence complete the cast as the girl vegetated by a car accident and her put-upon mother, destined to care for her forever.Banned by the BBC for nine years, mainly because the basic message of the play is that as the devil rapes Pattie, so her restores her power of speech and the quality of her existence. But the play is much more profound than that, although some of its message is muddled and not fully developed. Potter himself claimed that 'Brimstone and Treacle' was a religious parable about good and evil - if so, it raises some interesting questions while being both distasteful and compelling to watch.

This film originated in a play with the same name written in 1976 by Dennis Potter for the TV series 'Play for Today', produced in the U.K. by the BBC. Its theme is straight black Gothic horror, and before the production was aired the BBC decided that it would be too shocking for many of its likely audience, so it was mothballed. Ultimately this TV presentation was not aired until 1987. (I have been told that there was an earlier public release in the form of a stage presentation, but I have been unable to confirm this). Long before this, Dennis Potter rewrote the play for the cinema and the film version was released in 1982. Basically the story is the same, but the film provides a little more fluidity than the play in which the action takes place almost entirely in one room. There is however one important difference, which can be discussed without creating a spoiler as it relates to a scene that Dennis Potter deleted from the play when creating his film script. The cast of the play features a typical suburban middle class family, comprising parents with an adult but paralysed and brain damaged daughter, who receive an unexpected visitor claiming to be a former friend of the daughter. I understand an early scene in the play showed the daughter becoming paralysed by a road accident when she ran out of her home in horror after finding her father having sex with her best friend. This immediately created layers of guilt which were quite significant in the TV play, but which the author decided to minimise in the screen version where the only reference to the accident comes later in the story as part of a dream sequence experienced by the father. The story evolves around the visitor, Martin - a part played in the film by "Sting"; who was formerly a soloist with "The Police" (the group responsible for most of the sound tracks associated with the film), but who has now established an independent reputation as a film actor. At first Martin provides friendly and helpful support for the family but later, and seemingly innocently, he opens up troubles and problems which had been papered over, and thoroughly disrupts the normal tenure of the family's life. The dialogue is effective sharp and pointed, and the film, which is quite short, rapidly progresses to its final horrendous climax.Ultimately the message is religious; but whilst the film raises plenty of questions, no solutions are offered. The parents consist of a somewhat disillusioned religious publisher, and his wife who shows a deep but simple faith. Their visitors conversation gradually but increasingly disturbs the faith of both of them, as well as that of the woman's club in the couple's church. In the original play hints were given that the mysterious visitor was Satan himself; but in the case of the film it was, probably wisely, decided to remove these; and by the final climax, the viewer is left - according to personal religious convictions - to conclude that the visitor was Satan himself, an ordinary person possessed by the devil, or a naturally evil person behaving in his natural way. The horror of the film is intensified by the fact that nothing in any way supernatural takes place, we are just observing a segment of ordinary human life. Ultimately this becomes a very rewarding but deeply disturbing film to watch.Those interested in comparing the film with the original play may wish to note that both may be more readily available in PAL format from the U.K. - its country of origin. DVD's of the film are currently listed there, and I believe that a BBC videotape of the televised play, released following its eventual screening, is also available.

My wife and I saw _Brimstone and Treacle_ at the Potter retrospective held in Boston a couple of years ago; we were discussing its implications for days afterward. Like much of Potter's work, it shows how good television can be when put in the right hands. Provocative and at times disturbing, it uses the devices of a moral fable to question our common-sense idea of moral judgment. A mysterious young man (Michael Kitchen) insinuates himself into the household of an unhappy suburban couple whose life centers around caring for their paralyzed and mute grown daughter. He has a plan for these people, and in the implementing of it he crosses the line into the unethical and the criminal. Yet we're being asked to look beyond appearances, because Martin is not an ordinary human. There's something demonic about his perverse toying with people -- not to mention his affinity with thunderstorms. As the film reaches its climax, another order of truth is revealed, one that stands our comfortable certainties about right and wrong on their heads.