Dennis Potter's Karaoke (1996)

Karaoke (1996)

Dir. Renny Rye | 4 episodes, approx 50 minutes each.

The first part of Potter’s final work was broadcast two years after his death. He wrote it with the full knowledge that he was dying, which makes viewing it a deeply poignant experience.

You might expect the situation to have pushed him towards tapping into the bleaker side of his talent, but there’s a huge amount of darkly wry humour in the script. There’s also a feeling that inevitability can’t be conquered, so it should instead be thoroughly mocked as best we can.

The main protagonist is a screenwriter named Daniel Feeld. Daniel, played with intensity by Albert Finney, is diagnosed with the same painful medical condition that killed Potter in real life, so it’s fair to assume that it’s at least partly autobiographical in nature. His most recent work is causing grief for both himself and the director of the TV adaptation (Richard E. Grant). It’s fiction but, as is already established, fiction often has a modicum of reality in it.

When Daniel, in his real life, encounters people who resemble his written characters he begins to feel somehow responsible for what happens to them.

The director, the one filming Daniel's burgeoning fiction, is tethered to a single scene that repeats over and over for both him and us. As he struggles to make sense of it, the wider story and the parts each person plays within it (like we do in our actual lives everyday) begins to resonate more and more, driven forward by Daniel's need to prevent his words becoming someone else's reality. The journey toward completion sends tendrils of consequence into the fates of everyone involved. The people at the centre of the drama obviously get hit the worst, but even the ones on the periphery are affected.