SOURCE: An obituary in The New York Times, June 8, 1994, p. 11.

[In the following obituary, Grimes recounts the highlights of Potter's life and career.]

Dennis Potter, the caustic and controversial writer of the innovative British television dramas The Singing Detective and Pennies from Heaven, died yesterday at his home near Ross-on-Wye, England, about 100 miles west of London. He was 59.

The cause was cancer. In an interview earlier this year, for a segment of the British television program Without Walls that was broadcast on April 5, Mr. Potter revealed that on Valentine's Day he had been told he was suffering from cancer of the pancreas, and that it had spread to his liver.

Mr. Potter wrote novels and screenplays, but it was in television, which he referred to as "the greatest of all media" because of its accessibility, that he preferred to work. He took audacious liberties with television drama, infusing...