I like the ending comment of the two "shadowy detective figures" at the very end....."we're nothing but padding". Now apply that to all six hours and you'll have the gist of this movie. The main character is a disease ridden stomach turning figure that you're forced to view for all 6 hours of this mess. And what a mess it is....stringing together dozens of incoherent musical vignettes in the hopes that something coherent might emerge. Nothing does. If you like old period music from the 20th century, especially from England/Ireland/etc. you will be far better off to get it served up on a CD than see it associated with this crazy quilt. The acting was superb, but I'm sincere in telling you that there was no story, no theme, and no sense in this movie.

It is Dennis Potter's imaginative and intelligent use of the technical possibilities provided by television - combined, of course, with the deep humanity of his vision - that marks The Singing Detective as a uniquely brilliant work.His ground-breaking technique is the moving between separate levels: the present of the patient Philip in the ward, the past of his childhood experiences that is so ever-present in his memory and so influential on him as an adult, and the world of his imaginary detective story that in turn derives its own inspiration and motivation from those problems of the past. The result is a breadth and depth of analysis of a man's life, including the impulses of the creative process itself, that has never been matched on television, at least to my knowledge.And it is beautifully, hauntingly, filmed and soundtracked.

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!

Episode one, if it can truly be identified as such, was enough to drive me away from the rest of the DVD. The plot is convoluted, confusing, frequently silly, and appears to be going noplace. After all, who needs to see the same scene (a body pulled from the river)three, or was it four, times? . After sixty or seventy minutes there was still no substance to characters or plot, nor a single person I would care to spend another ten minutes watching, nor any indication that things would improve (especially Mr. Gambon's skin condition). There was so much filler just to use up air time (?)...skin rubs, Physician's rounds, hospital ward banter, etc., that the main story line was neglected for minutes on end. Finally episode one ended, I slipped the DVD back into its sleeve, settled down with a good book. Hmmm...wonder wher I can sell a mint condition set of "Singing Detective" DVDs?