This is one of the two best mini-series I've seen.* It has excellent casting, excellent photography, even excellent sound. And the script, by Dennis Potter, is amazing. I'd say there are three or four master's theses in that script for those who are into such things. The series stars Michael Gambon, Janet Suzman, and Patrick Malahide as the major characters, but the supporting cast is one of the best I've seen."The Singing Detective" follows some days in the life of one Philip E. Marlow, the writer of cheap detective novels. Marlow has psoriasis, a skin disease that renders him incapable of motion, keeping him in constant pain and delirium. Marlow drifts in and out of cogency, and we follow his delirious dreams and waking life. In his dreams, Marlow has cast himself as the title character in his first novel, called -- wait for it -- "The Singing Detective." Because Marlow is truly delirious, we can't always tell when what we're seeing is actually happening and what is a part of Marlow's delusion. Interspersed with his delusions from the novel are flashbacks to Marlow's childhood in a rural English village, where his father was a coalminer. While Marlow is in the hospital, he's seen by various doctors, cared for by various nurses, and is seen by a psychiatrist. All of these seens (er, scenes) take on a life of their own, with some of the actors playing several characters. The issues Marlow is dealing with include whether his psoriasis is self-induced, the suicide of his mother (used in his novel "The Singing Detective"), his feelings about sexual intercourse, and his feelings about writing trashy novels instead of literature.Potter breaks down the usual wall between plays/movies and the audience by having his characters address the audience directly. In addition, the character Marlow, played by Gambon, plays the titular singing detective, Marlow's mother plays a German spy, and the actor Malahide plays more characters than I could keep track of. In the novel, a woman commits suicide by jumping off a bridge, and her face is revealed several times, but there are three actresses portraying the dead body, including Marlow's mother.Additionally, fictional characters from his novel interact with Marlow and other purportedly real characters from Marlow's purportedly real life. And two of the fictional characters step into meta-roles, addressing the fictionality of their existence, addressing the facts that they don't even have names and are there just to stand around. They confront the "real" Marlow and attempt to kill him, resulting in a gunfight in the hospital, where the fictional Marlow as the singing detective murders the "real" Marlow, his author. Potter had some very serious problems, and they tumble out helter-skelter in this mini-series.Dennis Potter was born in the Thirties and died in 1994 from panchreatic cancer. Potter hated Rupert Murdoch and named his fatal cancer Rupert. In 1962, Potter was diagnosed with psoriatic arthropathy, which not only caused horrible, debilitating lesions on his skin (worse than was shown on Marlow), but crippling arthritis. His hands were reduced to clubs, and he continued to write by taping a pen to his hand. It may be that the drugs used to treat his disease caused the panchreatic cancer.Potter has written about his sexual abuse by a relative when Potter was a child, and he seems to have been disgusted by sex the rest of his life. Although he denies his works are autobiographical, it's very clear he draws much of his writing from personal experiences. Several scenes in "The Singing Detective" show characters dealing badly with sexual intercourse.The series was directed by Jon Amiel, and he did a marvelous job. The music for the series was chosen from Thirties and Forties classics, and I recommend listening to the series with your best sound system.Potter also wrote the mini-series "Pennies from Heaven," starring Bob Hoskins, which I also recommend. "Pennies from Heaven" is darker than "The Singing Detective." I haven't seen the film version with Steve Martin. Some of the aggravation of Potter's writing the screenplay for MGM spills over into "The Singing Detective."*The other is "Tinker,Tailor, Soldier, Spy."

All I can say about this movie is that it is the best -- from the screenplay to the cinematography to the choreography to the acting -- this movie is the best! It's got it all -- from irony to bathos.Knowing nothing of the plot, it was just a bit hard to get into. But by the time I had watched 15 minutes, I was hooked. It took me a while (all right, over an hour) to understand the flashbacks and the surrealism (come to think of it, that element is rather similar to what the Coen Brothers did in their masterpiece Barton Fink) but when I did sort out the real from the surreal and the present from the past, I was overcome with admiration.It's visually gorgeous; the music is luscious; the pacing is perfect ... The Singing Detective is glorious, a splendiferous accomplishment.See it ASAP!

I heard about this miniseries last year in the local newspaper. One critic wrote that it was the best thing ever to be showed in Television. After reading this i started researching and i finally bought (Directly from England) "The Singing detective" DVD. I believe i wasn't prepared at first to see "The singing Detective", because i thought it would be a regular mini, but i was wrong. After watching the first episode i realized that i had to watch it again because i didn't understand even one of the scenes in the first episode. After re watching it and reading some of the comments in this site i continued watching the rest of the episodes. I watched 6 hours straight of pure brilliance.I recommend this mini to everyone that can understand true artistic achievements.10/10

Spoilers herein.I have been without a TeeVee for thirty years. It is a standing challenge to my friends to show me something that is produced for TeeVee that does less harm than good in working with the viewer's mind.I finally have it here. Lynch's `Twin Peaks' experiment came close, but turned into a comment on the empty soul of TeeVee as the basic material was passed from one director to another, each trapped by different restrictions in the medium. Lynch finally had to `fix' it by making a wrapper film that brilliantly references those bounds.What we have here is something that spreads out and takes time to percolate. It is designed to coherently be delivered in small discrete parts. I saw it on DVD but can imagine it not being destroyed by those pesky interruptions and the delay between broadcasts.The idea is pretty complex for TeeVee: five levels of narrative, three in story, one in reference and one in a particularly strong use of song as narrative. This last is so novel and different from the conventions of artificial reality we've come to expect in musicals that it alone makes it interesting.The nominal base level is Marlow the writer in a hospital. He has a story that was written, is being written and rewritten and adapted. It is also what we see.Above these two levels is the explicit recognition that Potter, the `real' writer is Marlow, the fictional writer. This is wisely not introduced in any meaningful way until the 4th episode, including the notion that the characters at all levels are in control.Below these three levels is the story of his `murder' of his mother, his own `detection' and the ghosts of character.Permeating all is that fifth level, narrative assembled and saturated by popular song. Some characters and actors, even gestures and props (like that one shoe) appear in all five levels. Redheads are used in a particular clever way. (A project with similar tone and aspirations was "Draughtsman's Contract" which inspired Potter and which also features Janet Suzman.)But as time goes on, we can see that each level struggles to be the generator of the others. Particularly sweet is the notion that the singing detective can sing and think at the same time and what we see at all levels is what he thinks. Over time it becomes more viable to see the situation in any one layer as written (or imagined) in any other. Along the way he provides clear tools for doing so.The interesting thing here is that Potter uses the time of the miniseries format wisely. He introduces a new layer or idea or narrative folding in each half hour. Only so fast as we can adapt. He uses the same material over and over, but always in a new context. It is exactly anti-TeeVee in this way as TeeVee depends on a consistency of context as frame. Here, the frame shifts, and the whole point of the context is to provide levers for that shifting.That's what the detective story is all about: starting with events and locating a frame. And why it revolutionized literature. Too bad the appearance of this didn't revolutionize TeeVee.I haven't yet seen the 2003 film version, with the amazing Downey as Marlow. But it seems that this exploration in causal frames needs time to stretch, because one of Potter's tricks is to use the fact that his scope exceeds that we normally swallow in a 90 minute film experience.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.