The Singing Detective

Dennis Potter’s The Singing Detective, directed by Jon Amiel and starring Michael Gambon as the Singing Detective. Well, not as the Singing Detective, because he is a fictional product of Philip Marlowe’s deluded brain. He is an author lying in a hospital bed suffering from arthritic psoriasis. His body is one big scab. His books come alive in his head and onscreen. Patients break into popular song and dance numbers and Michael Gambon as Philip Marlow the Singing Detective croons the popular hits of the day to the ballroom customers. Whether this is a cover for his other job, as a detective, or whether his job as a detective is a cover for his job as a dance hall crooner is unclear. What he is investigating is also unclear. His childhood self pops up and watches on from a tree in a Welsh pit village during the Second World War. One of the places he likes to watch is the local hall, where his dad and duet partner Biney entertain the miners and their wives. The young Philip, however, from his vantage point in the tree spots Biney and his mum in the glade. He follows and watches them having sex. Other scenes are set in the village school where a young Biney is shown to have shit on the teacher’s desk. Another Finey Biney pops up in the Singing Detective stories. He’s the lothario and villain that hires the chanter and part time detective to investigate the killing of the prostitute he had slept with, but Marlowe starts investigating the man that has hired him. Women’s naked bodies end up being trawled from rivers and others end up being shot, which may, or may not be related to Marlow’s mother’s suicide, and the onset of his psoriasis from some, as yet, subconscious trigger point. To complicate things further another Finey/Biney crops up as his apparent love rival. He thinks his wife is having an affair with him. We are shown that this is the case and she and he are plotting to cheat him out of a £500 000 offer for his screenplay of The Singing Detective. It all sounds very complicated with Chanderlesque detectives, matinee idol songs and childhood memories all combined, and it is, but quite brilliant.