Pennies from Heaven

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.

I was 14 when Pennies From Heaven came out on our TV. The year was 1989. I didn't see it from the start and I was very fortunate indeed than I managed to see it at all. I always remember that magical moment when I saw three women dancing and singing "You Rascal You". From that moment I was totally hooked. I hardly could wait the next week episodes, and after them I was floating somewhere in the sky for sometime.

After that TV-series I have never seen anything else which has affected me as it did. There was some magical aura about it, something which you can hardly explain. The actors were great, especially Sherilyn Campbell were adorable. Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters in that movie version were nothing compared to these original 'lovebirds'. And of course those songs, those wonderful partly forgotten old dance numbers were the salt and soul in Pennies From Heaven.

I think it goes without saying that the Brits are geniuses of making great TV-drama. And that TV-series is an unique example of their craftsmanship in that area.

Dennis Potter's PENNIES FROM HEAVEN is a masterpiece of both style and substance. It is a masterpiece of style in that it vividly conjures the look and atmosphere of mid 1930s England. This setting perfectly complements the original recordings of Depression era songs that emerge from the characters' mouths when they try to express themselves. It is a masterpiece of substance in that it is a riveting drama, sometimes exhilarating, sometimes poignant, sometimes both simultaneously.

PENNIES FROM HEAVEN dramatizes the trials and tribulations of Arthur Parker (Bob Hoskins), a song sheet salesman who unceasingly hopes the lyrics of the music he tries to peddle will become reality. It is a compelling story not only because of the novel use of lip synching to illustrate Parker's and the other characters' fantasies, but because of Potter's stark contrast between the songs' cheery lyrics and the characters' troubled lives. PENNIES also benefits from the cast's persuasive performances, especially Hoskins, Gemma Craven as his repressed wife Joan and Cheryl Campbell as a shy schoolteacher Arthur's infatuated with. One feels great empathy for the characters, even though they are flawed, because one can easily identify with their wishes and frustrations.

On one level, PENNIES FROM HEAVEN is a chilling cautionary tale- a warning that dreams of paradise are folly because life is cruel and hard. On another level, it is an inspiring story of hope- that even when life is at its most grim, we can always lift our spirits with those same dreams. Whatever message one may perceive, PENNIES FROM HEAVEN is thoroughly moving and absorbing, a testimony to the late Dennis Potter's genius.

"Pennies from Heaven" is the greatest thing that has been made for television (if we think of Fassbinder's "Berlin Alexanderplatz" as a film rather than television). Superb. Bob Hoskins is brilliant.

It is a sin this isn't available on tape of DVD.

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.