The first of two linked four-part series written by Dennis Potter for a joint BBC / Channel 4 production. It's well-known that Potter knew of his own terminal illness at the time of writing them and that he was racing against the clock to complete both works. I'll next move on to watch the succeeding four-parter, the more futuristic, science-fictiony, at least as I remember it, "Cold Lazarus" but have to say that even if Potter had left only this drama as his last statement, it would have made for a fine epitaph.
The premise is immediately intriguing. A wealthy, veteran writer, Daniel Feeld, played by Albert Finney, much-indulged by his alliterative-spoonerism quoting agent Roy Hudd and bend-over-backwards producer Anna Chancellor, is bedevilled by health problems which cause him excruciating internal pain and to occasionally black out. He tries to forget the pain with drink and cigarettes, but his main motivation is to complete his new work "Karaoke", the plot of which centres around a pretty young girl Sandra, played by Saffron Burrows, who works as a hostess in a sleazy karaoke bar run by its even sleazier boss, Hywel Bennett's Arthur "Pig" Malian. It turns out to be no accident that the young woman works for him as she has identified him as the selfish, cruel individual who years before got her mum pregnant, disfigured her in a drunken rage and abandoned the physically and mentally scarred woman to bring up her little girl alone. Sandra very much has the pig in her sights... Then, one night, at a posh restaurant, discussing the work with his publisher, Feeld thinks he hears his dialogue being spoken word for word by another young actress and her controlling boy-friend. Turns out Daniel has been having similar experiences of late and starts to think the unthinkable, that life is imitating his art and that the fateful ending of his fictional work will actually come to pass.
In an important sub-plot, the anxious director of the "Karaoke" production, Richard E Grant, along with his young Scottish editor, is trying to complete the programme, preferably without boozy old Daniel's interference. Married to money, he's been having an affair with the actress we saw earlier, Keeley Hawes, coincidentally in the actual employ of Pig Malian. Naturally this leads to blackmail as Malian has incriminating video evidence of the director's dalliance although the girl protests her complicity to Grant. These two stories come together and move apart under Potter's skilful exposition.
It's impossible not to perceive the valedictory tone to "Karaoke", with its references to sex, violence, death and music prevalent to Potter's work. It's no coincidence that Feeld gets to sing "Pennies From Heaven" perfectly in the karaoke bar just before the climax, "Pennies From Heaven" being the title of the successful BBC drama which really brought him to notice in the 70's. Then there's the mysterious old man played by Ian McDiarmid who almost exactly resembles the real-life Potter who we see in the background, observing the action.
Finney is brilliant as the tortured writer, who sees in Sandra an echo of his own young, thwarted love and determines to save her from the fate he thinks he's already written for her. Roy Hudd, perhaps better known as a comedian is good value as Feeld's put-upon manager, even if his verbal slips start to grate after a while, although I'm not quite sure what he ever did to deserve such a harpy of a mother, played by Liz Fraser, as he gets here. Then there's Sandra's mother, played by Alison Steadman, another near-grotesque with her disfigurement and psychologically disturbed persona.
Potter brilliantly interweaves the real and unreal as he moves inevitably towards his well-imagined climax, artfully setting up the cryogenic angle which will fuel the succeeding "Cold Lazarus". Even though it was made in the 90's I think it's one of the most imaginative and thought-provoking dramas I've seen on the small screen and only hope that "Cold Lazarus" is of the same high standard.
