Pennies from Heaven

I remember seeing this on TV when it first came out. I was changing channels, and here were these woman, tap dancing on a coffin, lip syncing, "I'll be glad when you're dead, you rascal you." I was hooked.

It was the first time I ever saw Bob Hoskins, who managed to make a character who was truly awful somehow loveable.

It's a depression-era story, and while the story itself is grim, somehow the telling is joyful, with the cast breaking into "song." The songs are wonderful old songs, and they just mouth to them, and it creates a surreal feeling, but one that works, because it's as if this is what they are feeling (and could have felt at the time in the vernacular of the old songs).

The whole telling of this story is so original and vivid that you must watch it when you can.

==> Don't confuse this with the movie version, directed by Herbert Ross, with Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters has spectacular production values (unfortunately, the biggest production number was actually cut), but Steve Martin, great as he is, just doesn't make you like and feel for him the way Hoskins does. Bernadette is sufficiently waif-like, but she lacks Gemma Craven's grittiness.

Christopher Walken is the highlight of the film, doing an incredible song/dance/striptease on a bar that shows what a great dancer he is.

Thanks to the PBS Network, KCET 28 Los Angeles, I was able to see "Pennies From Heaven" years ago during a tribute to writer, Dennis Potter. I throughly enjoyed this tv mini-series. To be honest in this review, I did not get to see the last episodes of "Pennies From Heaven" because my VHS video tape cut off after six hours of recording. The last scene I saw was when Bob Hoskins and the blonde lady were eating at a ritzy restaurant and had just tasted the wine. But I throughly enjoyed all that I had seen. The drama, the comedy and the good ole music is fantastic. Bob Hoskins is a young 36 in this film. Handsome and dashing. He is perfect in the lead role. It is fun to watch him lip-syncing. Bob Hoskins acting is the best and the top. His clarity of emotions that he brings forth (to the camera, to the viewer) is impeccable. Oh, how I wish this fine production were available on VHS video or DVD. I guess the only chance of seeing this tv mini-series again is if the PBS network in Los Angeles broadcasts it again. The 25th Anniversary of this "Pennies From Heaven" tv-mini-series is on March 7, 2003.

This series first aired when I was completing my school career and encouraged me to watch other Dennis Potter work. I have watched re-runs and the series on DVD many times since and I am still struck by new and startling elements in it's writing. It is one of the finest pieces of television the BBC ever produced. Dennis Potter was a unique talent with an ear for how people spoke and the ability to cut through the words to get to the truth. Not all his work was to the standard of Pennies From Heaven but it was always engaging and thought-provoking. This series is in the top 25 of the BFI's poll of best television and rightly so.

If you have never seen it, watch it and if you saw it years ago, it bears re-watching. Great writing like this always offers something new and fresh.

With all the characters suddenly bursting into song, thankfully mimed to the original artists, this series made new ground. Very entertaining, lots of obscure but brilliant supporting actors, and a great script. The central role was brilliantly portrayed by Hoskin's frustrated salesman, trying to be taken seriously but also looking for satisfaction from his hopelessly frigid wife. His lust interest is one of those women who ooze sex appeal, and it's easy to understand how a man could fall when confronted with such unbridled passion. The whole series focuses on repressed desires and imagined hopes, as expressed by the episodes of song and dance. Notable is the courtroom scene in which the entire jury bursts into a routine. One to buy and keep.

To evaluate Pennies from Heaven solely in terms of its use of 1930s dance tunes is at best blinkered and at worst deeply stupid. What Potter did with those tunes was to point up how his characters sought refuge in what now would be called 'pop culture' to escape the grim realities of the time - and he was writing about the 1930s: the Depression, Fascism, Stalinism, etc. And Potter was genuinely fond of the 30s tunes that were used: I don't think the series mocks the songs at all, but their up-beat denial of misery is what makes their use so powerful as they counterpoint the characters' despair.

Whatever else Dennis Potter might have done (I am not an unqualified fan) this series is just about the greatest drama series ever seen on British TV; except, that is, for Potter's last word on his 'lip-sync' method, The Singing Detective, from 1987.