Dennis Potter Biography

British dramatist, born in the Forest of Dean, the son of a miner, educated at Oxford University; he subsequently worked as a journalist and critic. Starting in 1965, when his semi-autobiographical plays Vote, Vote, Vote for Nigel Barton and Stand Up, Nigel Barton were transmitted, he established himself as an original, inventive, and prolific television dramatist. His work for the medium includes an evocation of childhood, Blue Remembered Hills (1979), and the serials Pennies from Heaven (1978), The Singing Detective (1986), Christabel (1988), and Blackeyes (1989). He also adapted some of his television plays for the stage, among them a portrait of Christ, Son of Man (1969), and Brimstone and Treacle (1977), which was banned by the BBC because of a scene in which a mentally damaged young woman is raped by a satanic visitor.