SOURCE: "Dennis Potter," in British Television Drama, ed. George W. Brandt, Cambridge University Press, 1981, pp. 168-93.

In the essay below, Purser examines Potter's work in chronological order, exploring connections to biography, Potter's developing aesthetic and thematic interests and ideas about the medium of television.

Dennis Potter's titles are meticulously chosen even when they're filched from popular songs, but none gives such a clue to the ruling passion of his work as the one he picked for a now forgotten—indeed, lost—little play of 1966, Emergency Ward 9. It was, obviously, set in hospital, which was a recent experience of Potter's, and one unfortunately to be repeated many times, but the theme is not noticeably derived from personal suffering, nor in fact much concerned with suffering at all. It's a slight comedy of attitudes between patients in the ward, one unruly and working class, one prim and middle class, one...