Pennies From Heaven Revisited

 

 Someone mentioned on social media recently that Dennis Potter's Pennies From Heaven has not been broadcast or made available via streaming services for quite a few years. To be clear, that's the original 1978 TV series about a naive and optimistic songsheet salesman (Bob Hoskins), using 30s and 40s recordings to which actors mime, not the US film adaptation. In the book Potter on Potter the writer told Graham Fuller his thoughts about the latter:

... they failed to understand that it was supposed to be a home-made musical ... I was shown the schoolroom set ... a simulation of a genuine rural Illinois schoolroom of the thirties - and I thought it was great. Then they said, "Now we'll show you the fantasy schoolroom," which was this much bigger, all-white duplication of it. That was the moment I realised they were never going to make it work, but there was no way that could be conveyed. The whole thing was running, the cake was baked, and it was eating itself.

I watched the BBC series on DVD shortly before it was last broadcast on the Beeb. I hadn't seen it for around fourteen years, and jotted down some notes - not a full-blown review nor an episode guide, just some thoughts on the experience of revisiting it after such a sizeable gap of time.

What struck me first was that in one sense it's a museum piece, or at least it could strike younger viewers like that. Unlike The Singing Detective it was largely made on video - but Piers Haggard, the director, and Potter's longtime ally Kenith Trodd, the producer, say on the commentary track that the benefit of that method was that perfomances were the result of a prolonged rehearsal period (21 days per programme followed by a three day studio shoot would yield, with the filmed inserts, a complete episode) and the focus was firmly on the acting and the writing. 

Editing was largely live, cutting between five cameras, and compromises had to be made (they had to get out the studio by 10pm) with the result that some shots are less than perfect, but watching it again I didn't really notice that and was more keenly aware of its strong theatrical feel: performances are given time to develop, and feel organic in a way that the stop-start method of film does not allow: it's much closer to watching a live theatre piece. Not that this is peculiar to Pennies From Heaven; it was the way things were at the time, and if you watch an episode of The Forsyte Saga you'll be aware of the same effect. There is, however, a technical difference in the Potter series: filters were put on the video cameras so that film and video, even if they don't quite merge seamlessly, sit together more comfortably than in Forsyte or other dramas of the time. 

And there's something really charming about the small scale staging of the musical numbers, that "home-made" feeling which Potter missed in the Hollywood reimagining: Haggard and Trodd mention that Bob Hoskins was not the most natural dancer (though oh how that boy could cartwheel!) and had to slog to achieve what he did, but Gemma Craven, from a musical background, is mesmeric, and Peter Bowles as the prosecuting counsel has a wonderfully camp turn in the final episode. 

The choreography seems generally far more imaginative than in Lipstick on Your Collar. The producer and director point out that they were constantly ringing the changes in how they staged the numbers and made the transitions back to reallity. One of the most effective moments, depicted at the top of this piece (and possibly not unknown to the maker of Magnolia) has Hoskins lying flat in bed in the dark after another rejection from his wife, singing Down Sunnyside Lane then stopping although we continue to hear the vintage recording to which he had been miming.

Does it all work? Watching when the unfolding of the tale is no longer a surprise be you might become aware, as I was, that some numbers move the action on, or comment upon it, more effectively than others, and I think perhaps a few could have been cut. Treated as a whole, however, it remains a remarkable achievement. Piers Haggard (I think) makes the point that his later work is more directly about Potter himself, and that Pennies from Heaven, and in particular the character of Eileen, an innocent who comes to town, is more effective for the sense of distance from Potter the individual, while undoubtedly reflecting his obsessions. 

Which reminds me of the gist of one review I recall reading at the time of the first transmission. Oh, it's all Dennis Potter's usual concerns yet again, the crtiic began ... but no need to brace yourself because he or she admitted that such concerns once again made for riveting television.

As far as I can see there are only a couple of episodes currently up on youtube so it might be that the DVD is the only way to see it at present. I'd also recommend the book Potter on Potter, as it contains his thoughts about all his work up until the time of publication in 1993, handily grouped into chapters.

Earlier, you will remember, Potter used the image of a self-eating cake to describe the moment he realised that the film-maker's vision for Pennies From Heaven, though not his, had become unstoppable. In the TV series, however, you could say we have our cake and eat it, enjoying something of the glamour of those songs with the alienation effect of the characters miming to those ancient recordings meaning that we never lose sight of the drama.