Potter's career as a television playwright began conventionally enough with works like
Vote, Vote, Vote for Nigel Barton (
The Wednesday Play, 1965), a BBC play about a parliamentary candidate, based on Potter's own experiences as such. He took a major step into controversy with
Son of Man (
The Wednesday Play, 1969), starring Irish actor
Colin Blakely, an alternative view of the last days of
Jesus, which led to him being accused of
blasphemy.
His 1971 serial
Casanova was criticized for its sexual content. Another play,
Brimstone and Treacle (
Play for Today, 1976), was withheld by the BBC for many years due to concerns over the depiction of the rape of a disabled woman. It was eventually broadcast on
BBC2 in 1987, although a 1982 film version had been made, with
Sting in the leading role.
Potter's groundbreaking
Blue Remembered Hills was first shown on the BBC on
30 January, 1979. There may have been a second showing soon afterwards, but it finally returned to the British small screen at Christmas 2004, and again in the summer of 2005, showcased as part of the winning decade (1970s) having been voted by BBC4 viewers as the golden era of British television. The BBC video has long been unavailable, but it finally received a DVD release in September 2005. The adult actors playing the roles of children were
Helen Mirren, Janine Duvitski, Michael Elphick, Colin Jeavons, Colin Welland, John Bird, and
Robin Ellis. It was directed by the late
Brian Gibson. The moralistic theme was
the child is father of the man.
Potter had used the dramatic device of adult actors playing children before. However, the powerful imagery of "Blue Remembered Hills" lives on with the generation that first saw it, not least because of its uneasy, claustrophobic feeling provoking elements of xenophobia and a consideration of fearing the
outsider, such was the prevalence of the post-war mood within British society.
Potter continued to make news as well as winning critical acclaim for drama serials such as
Pennies From Heaven (1978) – which brought
Bob Hoskins into the limelight – and
The Singing Detective (1986), which did the same for
Michael Gambon. Both series were adapted as feature films with Potter receiving an Oscar nomination for
Pennies from Heaven.
Potter's screenplay for
Gorky Park (1983) earned him an
Edgar Award from the
Mystery Writers of America. He wrote the script for the widely praised but seldom seen 1985 miniseries of
F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night with
Mary Steenburgen as Nicole Diver. He also wrote the screenplay for
Dreamchild (1985). In her last film role,
Coral Browne portrayed the elderly Alice Hargreaves who recalls in flashbacks her childhood when she was the inspiration for
Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland.
Potter's TV miniseries,
Blackeyes (1989, also a novel), a drama about a
fashion model was reviewed as self-indulgent by some critics, and accused of contributing to the
misogyny Potter claimed he intended to expose. In 1992 he directed a film,
Secret Friends (from his novel,
Ticket to Ride), starring
Alan Bates. The executive producers were Robert Michael Geisler and John Roberdeau, who later produced
Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line.
Secret Friends premiered in New York at the
Museum of Modern Art as the gala closing of the
Museum of Television & Radio’s week-long Potter retrospective. Potter proposed to write an "intermedia" stage play for Geisler-Roberdeau based on
William Hazlitt’s Liber Amoris, or The New Pygmalion, but he died before it could be commenced. Potter's romantic comedy
Lipstick on Your Collar (1993) was a return to more conventional themes and the familiar format of six hour-long episodes, but did not become the desired popular success, although it helped launch the carreer of
Ewan MacGregor.
Although Potter won few awards, he is held in high regard by many within the television and film industry, and he was an obvious influence on such creators as
Steven Bochco, Alan Ball, Margaret Edson and
Alain Resnais. His work has been the subject of many critical essays, books, websites and documentaries.
In 1990
Mary Whitehouse, a long time critic of Potter, claimed on BBC Radio that Potter had been influenced by witnessing his mother engaged in adulterous sex. Potter's mother won substantial damages from the BBC and
The Listener, who were reportedly unimpressed by Whitehouse's claim to have had a blackout on air and subsequently to have had no recollection of her words.
