04/20/2022 Evolution of Quality Television

Christine Anlage Professor B.

“The Detective Who Sings”

“The Singing Detective” (1986) by Dennis Potter is described best as a six-episode fever

dream that is a once in a lifetime experience. The series follows novelist Philip Marlow (Michael

Gambon), who is hospitalized due to a debilitating skin disease that makes him unable to move.

“The Singing Detective” tackles various parts of Philip Marlow's character through cutaways and

flashbacks. There are times where you see him think about his novel that shares the same name

as the show, and there are also times where you are shown pieces of his childhood. At first, I

thought I had an idea of what was going on in the series. But then the first musical number

happened, and I proceeded to throw any normal logic I applied to this show out the window.

There are many things to talk about in relation to this series, but I’ll try and break it down in a

way that somehow makes sense.

Philip Marlow has a very strange relationship with women. When he was a young boy,

his Mother (Alison Steadman) took him away from his Father (Jim Carter), who he deeply cared

for. He also appears to have a distant and cold relationship with his wife Nicola (Janet Suzman),

so much so that he denies even being married to her. When fantasizing about his novel, all of the

women are all treated as sexed-up objects. When Mark Finney (Patrick Malahide) has Sonia

(Kate McKenzie) over, he slaps her and messes up her makeup, making fun of her for selling her

body for money. Then the two have sex and he threatens to burn her skin with a lit cigar. My

personal observation is that the reason he looks down on women is because of his mother. Young
Philip (Lyndon Davies) was broken when he had to leave his Father behind, then seeing his

Mother engage in tearful sex with another man pushed him over the edge. This is the beginning

of Philip Marlow's trauma. He never saw his Mother the same way after that day. When Philip

confronts his Mother about it, she slaps him, and he runs. It’s implied that sometime after that

incident, Philip’s Mother kills herself by jumping in the river, allowing him and his Father to be

reunited. Finally, the last significant woman in the story related to Philip is his grade-school

teacher (Janet Henfrey). She was the one who made the (correct) assumption that it was Phillip

who had defecated on her desk, but then assumed it was Philip who knew the true culprit instead.

This teacher abused her position of power, against a child who was processing various amounts

of emotions and trauma. What Philip did was wrong, on multiple accounts. However, when a

child acts out in a manner similar to the young Philip, that is a cry for help. Her threats of

immense violence struck fear into Philip, so he lied and blamed another student. Said student

was never the same after that, according to the adult Philip Marlow. Even in adulthood, Philip

feels terribly guilty for his actions. All because a woman, who apparently believes in God’s grace

and good will, threatened to have a child beaten in front of the whole school when she could

have put him in time out.

Another important detail of “The Singing Detective” is the various plots that weave itself

through the story. At first it was easy to tell what was going on. A man is in the hospital and

cannot move his body, so he resorts to thinking about a novel he wrote in the past to distract him.

But then comes the other plotlines; Philip's childhood and Nicola trying to get the script rights

with Mark Finney. The easiest plot to follow is the hospital plotline. It’s simple and

straightforward. It’s interesting to see Philip grow as a person throughout his time in the hospital,
with one of the earliest signs of growth being his tearful reaction to Ali’s (Badi Uzzaman) sudden

death. The longer Philip stays in the hospital, the more of his childhood he starts to process.

While the viewer gets tastes of it earlier in the series, we see Philip’s memory of watching his

Mother have sex with another man after George’s (Charles Simon) crude comments; “Up with

their dresses and down with their knickers”. Eventually, the viewer finds out that Philip's Mother

committed suicide by throwing herself in the river. Throughout the show, a body is constantly

being fished out from the river in the novel plotline. I think the reason this scene comes up so

much is because Philip never really got over his Mother’s death, and that he partially blames

himself. This particular scene changes every so often, so I assume that this is because Philip tried

to repress the memory, or alter it like the way he did in his novel. “The Singing Detective” novel

plotline was the hardest for me to follow, as details would shift and change so much that I would

lose track. One of the wonderful things about “The Singing Detective” is that it comes across as

so bizarre that it easily grasps your attention, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to follow. Initially, I

thought that the plot with Nicola and Mark took place in the same universe as the hospital

plotline. The first time they spoke while mentioning their grammar (exclamation point, comma,

dash), I just thought it was a joke. Then, it happened again. By the end, I realized that the whole

plot was probably conceived by Philip while his mind was slowly turning to mush. This also ties

into his repressed anguish towards his Mother’s suicide, as Nicola was described as killing

herself in the same way as Philip’s Mother.

“The Singing Detective” utilizes older songs in a way that is bizarre but charming. A

majority of the songs sung in “The Singing Detective” are lip-synced but treated as diegetic

sounds in the show's universe. It always caught me off guard when a song would suddenly start,
as if I was ripped from the show I was watching and forced to watch another one. Nonetheless, it

made for an interesting viewing experience. Seeing how Philip’s Father sang in a small club

alongside his Mother, I think that the musical numbers are a way for Philip to remember his

Father. The brain often does strange things, and while sometimes it makes you feel depressed

and exhausted, it can also try and make you feel happy as well. So, in my eyes, the musical

sequences represent Philip's Father, and the body being fished from the river represents his

Mother. I was also surprised to hear a song I was actually familiar with, “Bei Mir Bist Du

Shein”, by The Andrews Sisters, which was sung at the beginning of “Clues”. In a sea of

confusion and loss, it’s nice to hear a song you recognize.

One of the major themes in “The Singing Detective” is escapism. Philip finds some sort

of solace in thinking about his novel, so he constantly retreats to the same fantasy of it. The fact

that he has a character based off of him in the novel (right down to sharing the same name) gives

Philip a proper source of comfort in his life. He gets to see himself as some hotshot, savvy,

important detective. It’s interesting to see how “The Singing Detective” portrays intrusive

thoughts. One moment, Philip is dreaming about a club with singing and dancing, then suddenly,

characters from the real world start to appear and break the immersion. Even when he is lost in

his croning daydreams, flashbacks of his childhood leak through and throw the whole sequence

off track. So much so that a character from his novel, who is played by the same actress as Ms.

Marlow, is shot and left to die in Detective Marlow’s arms. In a way, the show is telling the

viewer that escapism and daydreaming can only make you feel safe and comforted for a finite

amount of time before the world comes crashing down again. I feel that escapism is a relatable

thing in the modern age, more so than ever before. If one were to think about it. The pandemic is
Philip Marlow’s skin condition, and the novel daydreams are our TV shows, video games, and

comfort foods.

The deeper I got into “The Singing Detective”, the more I realized how much I relate to

Philip Marlow. I’ve always felt that, to truly understand a character, you have to experience the

same pain as they do. Just like Philip, I’m a writer (and also an artist). I spend my days writing or

drawing new things as they come into my mind. However, time and time again, my hands start to

fail me. The skin on my hands will often become red, cracked, shriveled, and painful. When I

first got a good look at Philip’s fisted red hands, I remembered the hell I went through. There’s

this horrifying feeling of having ideas and not having the ability to put them down on a paper or

a screen. Another aspect of Philip that I relate to is childhood and family trauma. Philip comes

from a dysfunctional family, which hits its breaking point when Ms. Marlow wants to move

away from Mr. Marlow's parents. Every family has their issues, as does mine. Hearing Philip’s

Grandfather cough aggressively, so much so that Ms. Marlow spirals out of control, reminded me

of my own father. My Father wakes up every morning at 5am, takes a shower, then coughs. He

coughs and wakes up my insomniac Mother, who will shriek and yell at him for waking her up.

All the while, I’m forced to try and go back to sleep. The final thing I relate to Philip is his use of

escapism. I often let myself get completely immersed in complex and drawn-out fantasies that

make me the hero who everyone looks up to. It may sound silly, but without it, I might just lose

my mind in this sad old world. Philip was always on the brink of losing his mind, but he had one

tether to sanity. His own imagination.

 “The Singing Detective” is a piece of media that will continue to rattle around in my head

until the day I die. At first, I thought it was going to be a “so bad that it’s good” kind of show.

Then, after watching "Skin", I realized it was much more complex than that. I was impressed

with everything in the series, especially the actors. Micheal Gambon plays a wonderfully cynical

character that the audience can laugh alongside them, while also feeling pity for them. If I had to

pick a favorite character, it would be Reginald (Gerard Horan). No particular reason, I just

thought he was an interesting little background character. The integration of musical numbers

was genius, and a great form of exposure to older songs that most people probably haven’t heard

of before. My favorite numbers were “Dry Bones” by Fred Waring and “Accentuate the Positive”

by Bing Crosby and The Andrews Sisters. At first, I disliked how discombobulated that story

became by the time Nicola and Mark Finney showed up. But now I think it’s an interesting part

of the story, because the viewer doesn't really know if what they’re seeing is actually real or not.

What left me confused were the two mysterious men who were trying to kill Philip Marlow.

What was their purpose? It was interesting to see them jump from the novel, to Philip’s

childhood memories, then to the hospital. I knew by the end of "Heat" that I wouldn’t understand

everything this series had to offer, so I’m not too worried, but I’d like to know what they were up

to. It was disappointing to see how little Dr. Gibbon (Bill Paterson) was used as a character. I felt

like he had a lot more potential. Overall, I liked “The Singing Detective”. It’s a series that I think

I’ll end up watching again one day. Truthfully, it’s not the kind of series you can watch only once

and understand everything. “The Singing Detective” is like a car, it has lots of moving parts. But

I don’t know what most of them do. I just hope that by my next watch-through, I start to

understand the series a bit more. My one hope is to show this to a friend in its entirety, turn to

them, and tell them that I understood everything that occurred in this six-hour fever dream show.