I just felt like going rapturous about British tv.. again.. as I'm watching the 1987 BBC production of John le Carre's " A Perfect Spy." After finishing watching episode one, about the childhood of the main character Magnus Pym, I found myself comparing it mentally to Dennis Potter's "The Singing Detective," which had been aired the year before using one of the main song's. I'm wondering if Hopcraft used the umbrella song on purpose because Potter did, only much more effectively. When Philip Marlow (Gambon) sang the umbrella song onstage at the Laguna Club (remember the flashing neon "gun" in the sign La-gun-a?), I mentally shivered with the layers of sinister connotations in the dissonance between the dancing audience and the dancing-singing Marlow showing up the horrible, corrupt secrets and lies behind even the most happy-go-lucky, designed-to-distract, entertainment icing over the most unhappy and abusive of childhoods or even lives. All this is true in "A Perfect Spy," but without the genre-bending and most interesting layers of symbols and meanings between different kinds of acts going on at the same time.

This is hard to explain, but Potter spoiled me. I realize that "A Perfect Spy" is indeed an example of tv at its greatest, but next to Potter it would be like an 8 or 9 compared to a 10+, that's all. Ray McAnally is fantastic as Magnus' father, and I could see him as a great Philip Marlow as well, but he never did get to do any signature Potter roles .. which is a shame because I've never seen a Potter work that didn't bring out the absolute best in everyone. So far I've seen "Pennies from Heaven," starring Bob Hoskins and Cheryl Campbell; "The Singing Detective," starring Michael Gambon; and "Lipstick on Your Collar," starring Ewan McGregor in his best and debut performance, the best fifties-type singer ever, better than Elvis even when being like Elvis! Soon I'm going to watch "Blue Remembered Hills" and "Brimstone and Treacle."

Thank you Great Britain for holding up the highest standards of theatrical and film production, brave and groundbreaking, starting with Patrick MacGoohan's "The Prisoner" series in the sixties and never letting up.

Sue



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/13/2005 01:15PM by Sue.