Dennis Potter's Lipstick on Your Collar (1993)

Lipstick on Your Collar (1993)

Dir. Renny Rye | 6 episodes, approx 60 mins each.

You've maybe already guessed by the cover art (pictured right) that Lipstick is set in the 1950s, which means music plays an important role.

Potter has a peculiar knack for making existing music and lyrics fit his narrative in unusual ways. He plays with them, opens them up and in doing so changes the intent in an often playfully ironic way. It's so successful that in the future when I hear many of the tracks used in the production I'll be smiling while thinking of the scenes they're attached to.

Of all the Potter TV Plays/Miniseries I've reviewed so far, Lipstick is my favourite for a number of reasons, the first of which is mentioned above.

There's also the top-class characterisation to consider, and the way some of the principals drift into their own fantasy realm when life bores or distresses them. In a few of the author's other works the fiction spills over into the reality, but here the reality becomes a part of the fiction; boring old farts who would rather be dead than caught dancing in their underwear are launched into spotlights to spin and twirl their stuffy stuff in an often ridiculous but hilarious manner.

At the centre of a majority of the daydreams is Private Mick Hopper (Ewan McGregor), a clerk who's desperate for his national service term behind a translator's desk at the Foreign Office in Whitehall to end so that he can live life to the full.

The blonde girl is Sylvia Berry (Louise Germaine), the kind of beauty they paint on the side of bombers, but she's as common as muck when she talks. Nevertheless, a number of people are utterly besotted with her, which invariably leads to trouble.

The lives of workers and residents intertwine at various points along the timeline, deepening our understanding of their situation and even on occasion changing our opinion of them.

There's occasional nudity and the politically incorrect notions of the era aren't overlooked or sidelined, so folks that are easily offended by such things should probably expect to be.