Dennis Potter's Visitors (1987)

Dennis Potter's Visitors (1987)

Dir. Piers Haggard

One of only two standalone TV Plays written by Potter for the BBC's Screen Two programme (see NOTE at bottom of page for additional info on Screen Two). Visitors was an adaptation by Potter of his own stage play, titled Sufficient Carbohydrate. There are reportedly a number of changes, such as the setting having been moved from an island of Greece to a place in Italy.

The story revolves around two couples, one of which has a son in his late teens. The couples are Jack and Elizabeth Barker (John Standing, Nicola Pagett) from Britain, and Eddie and Lucy Vosper (Michael Brandon, Glynis Barber) from the United States. It's the US couple who have a son, Clayton Vosper (Robert McNaughton). Eddie is Clayton's father, Lucy is his stepmother.

The two men are business partners, employed by the same multi-national food processing company that once belonged solely to Jack, but he sold off part of it, a decision he now regrets because of the changes that were made to production techniques. The duo are typical examples of the moody Brit and loud Yank, clichés used as such for dramatic purposes; but they're also more, they're chess pieces for Potter to move around his chequered and multilayered game board. The most interesting piece is arguably Clayton, even though he spends much of the time in his room feeling rejected.

As is often the case when couples who've been married too long are cooped-up together for a period of time in the name of relaxation, bickering breaks out. Potter's dialogue is unquestionably good and the actors, for the most part, deliver it well, particularly John Standing and Nicola Pagett, both of whom are better suited to carry the wickedly black humour (or more accurately, British humour) that surfaces as the relationships deepen.

-Interesting times at the Italian villa-

On a side note, Michael Brandon and Glynis Barber had partnered together before as TV detectives Dempsey and Makepeace (1985–86), a show that I enjoyed in my youth and would love to revisit someday. They got married in real life a few years after filming both it and Visitors.

NOTE: Screen Two was a BBC TV anthology series that ran from 1985 to 1994. It filled the gap left by the defunct Play for Today, a long-running series that had notched-up a remarkable 307 episodes in its fourteen-year run (1970-84). Info obtained from Wikipedia.