Pennies From Heaven [1978]

Potter's dark vision digs into British stoicism, sexual repression, the class system and even the coming of fascism in Europe. But it is especially poignant on the subject of the divide between art and reality. Piers Haggard directs the long piece with deft transitions between songs and story. (It was shot partly on multi-camera video, partly on film.) The cast is fine, especially the extraordinary Cheryl Campbell, who imbues her character with keen intelligence and no small measure of perversity. Bob Hoskins triumphs in his star-making part, bringing a demonic energy to his small-time Cockney, nearly bursting his button-down vests with frustration and appetite. Pennies from Heaven was remade in 1981 for the big screen (with Steve Martin), in an interesting, Potter-scripted adaptation; it's one of the reasons the original has been unavailable on home video for so long. --Robert Horton

The plot, as covered in more detail by other reviewers, seems fairly simplistic. Arthur, a amiable working-class Cockney, is trapped in a sexless marriage with staunched middle-class wife Joan, works long hours as a travelling sheet-music salesman, partakes of the occasional affair and, indulges himself in bouts of wild exaggeration amongst the other familiar-faced salesmen that he meets on his weekly rounds. For Arthur, this isn't just a job, but also an escape (both literal - in the sense that it gets him out of the house and away from the watchful eyes of polite society - and metaphoric, also), as he takes solace in the words and music of the romantic ballads that he foists upon local music shop stockists for the odd bob or too. The way in which Potter uses the songs and the way in which they have been integrated into the action is superb, and still seems revolutionary some twenty-six years after the programme's initial conception, as that opening scene, in which Arthur gazes wistfully into the bathroom mirror before suddenly breaking into song - or maybe not - as the rough and very much manly Arthur is merely lip-synching to some heartbreaking ode sung by a delicate young chanteuse!! This first instance of musical underpinning, as Potter not only hints at Arthur's state of mind through the contemplative lyrics, but also hints at a deeper fragility and sensitivity that is often lost in the pursuit of ladish bravado, is still one of the most astounding TV moments, with Potter and director Piers Haggard setting a scene that is surreal, fanciful and fabricated, but also overflowing with pain, angst, longing and degradation.

It is important for us to remember that Arthur, although out of step with the repressed, stiff-upper-lipped society in which he inhabits, is a creature desperate for love and physical understanding. His actions throughout the series might suggest otherwise (the frustration, sexual tension and occasional bouts of misogyny), he nonetheless is capable of moments of real warmth and tenderness, which is best illustrated in his growing relationship with Eileen as the story progresses. Although very much about Arthur and his journey, Potter also offers us two very complex female characters with Joan, Arthur's prim and proper wife of traditional middle-class values, and Eileen, the naïve yet passionate schoolteacher from the sheltered reaches of the forest of Dean. Both women love Arthur despite his actions and the reactions of those around him, and yet, we are left questioning throughout as to whether or not Arthur is the mind-mannered, though sexually frustrated dreamer we originally though, or if he is, perhaps, something much darker, and more predatory?

It would be wrong to go into any greater detail regarding the deeper implications of the plot... not least for those who've yet to see the programme, but also, because I'm not entirely sure I've grasped everything that Potter was getting at. Like his later masterpiece The Singing Detective, Pennies From Heaven is a series that works on multiple levels. On the one hand, it's a character piece... a journey for the character tied neatly into a format that has an almost "road-movie" quality to it. On top of that, it's a morality story... a play on the notion of fidelity and infidelity, love and lust, longing and perversion. On top of this we have a police story blurred by elements of self-referentialism... and then we have the music. The music is perfectly chosen, not only fitting the mood of the scene that it accompanies, but also revealing more about the characters and their situations through the lyrics and the tone of the singer's delivery. Sometimes the use of music can be comedic (or, darkly comedic), like, for example, in The Bad Man number, or it can be quite sinister... like the piece with the accordion man in the homeless shelter. More often, however, it evokes the sadness and longing at the heart of the characters.

The choreography, lighting, design and direction is impeccable throughout, with the crew using the limitation of having to combine studio filming and location filming to their advantage, by further juxtaposing the real with the bizarre. Although it's not as great as the Singing Detective, Pennies From Heaven is no less a work of genius. Though at times it can be quite frustrating, it is, nonetheless, a series that benefits greatly from multiple viewings, with each new viewing revealing a further interpretations that we may have missed before. The performances from the three leads are all great and help to carry the emotional weight of the project well (special mention to the supporting actors, dancers and technicians too) although it's Bob Hoskins lead performances as the complicated Arthur that is the real draw. Like most of the work of Dennis Potter, Pennies From Heaven is a rich and complex musical parable that has stood the test of time perfectly.


Bad value for money; also, not very enjoyable.   October 21, 2005
 6 out of 34 found this review helpful

Very glad I got the first DVD on rental, to see what it was like. Never saw this when it was first on, but enjoyed 'Lipstick on your collar' so thought I'd give it a whirl. Firstly, 28 for three disks? And each disk with only 2 episodes? That's a real rip off. Even 'Singing Detective' has three episodes per disk. On to the review: yes, it is well acted in places (Bob Hoskins, Cheryl Campbell) but frankly, why would I want to watch something where the actors burst into foggy song far too often? And as to Bob Hoskins' character - he may be frustrated and worn down by life's injustices, but at heart he's also rather unpleasant. So I found it hard to be drawn in. As to DVD extras, there weren't any (on the 1st disk).


Pennies revisited   February 8, 2005
 18 out of 26 found this review helpful

I have just finished watching the re-run of Pennies on BBC4. Now I am old enough to have watched it first time round and was eagerly looking forward to seeing again after 25 years. I was 20 in 1978 and very much in love with Cheryl Campbell (and I still am) so my memory of it was as a beacon of brilliance in a dowdy world of exams, the winter of discontent and strikes at British Leyland. I agree with the other comments about the central performances of Campbell, Hoskins and Craven (all excellent) and the those of the smaller part players too - the scene with Freddie Jones and Cheryl Campbell in the school room was magical. The musical numbers were as good as I remember too with some good dance sequences. However the pacing of the story is so slow and some of the dialogue so pedestrian that there were times I just wanted to fall asleep. With each of the six parts lasting 90 minutes I can't help feeling that the whole thing might have been better served if it had been edited down to 60 minutes a time and lost some of the more tedious dialogue. So overall I was dis-appointed but also surprised at how my memory of the piece was so selective. If nothing else it has made me question my judgement of events remembered from the past but also reminded me of just how beautiful Cheryl Campbell was in 1978.


One of Potter's masterpieces & a TV-great....   February 7, 2005
 29 out of 33 found this review helpful

'I wanted to write about the way popular culture is an inheritor of something else. You know the cheap songs so-called actually have something of the Psalms of David about them. They do say the world is other than it is. They do illuminate..,' Dennis Potter, 1994.

'Pennies from Heaven' is one of Potter's key-works (see also The Singing Detective, Blue Remembered Hills, Brimstone & Treacle, Double Dare, the neglected Black Eyes, the Nigel Barton plays...)- probably his signature-work, most notable for the way it uses music of the 1930s, lapsing into lip-synching to popular-songs, expressing another world and saying what the characters could not. The six-episodes, originally screened in 1978 (though not declared a classic until after the success of The Singing Detective), tell the story of a travelling sheet-music salesman Arthur Parker (Bob Hoskins) who is trapped in a marriage with Joan (the gorgeous Gemma Craven), until he crosses paths with a mysterious-down-&-out (Kenneth Colley)& a schoolteacher from the Forest of Dean Eileen Everson(Cheryl Campbell).

The story shifts between the Forest of Dean, to the Parker's suburbia, to the grimier side of London as Arthur & Eileen are put through traumas. Eileen is perhaps the Forest of Dean equivalent of the femme-fatale, Arthur's way to her leaves of trail of coincidences that lead toward the scaffold.

Of course, the dialogue is brilliant here- 'Pennies from Heaven' remains a very funny-series, I found myself laughing at the dialogue (e.g. "You've got your organs and all, Arthur", "Nah- just dippin' me wick", "I painted lipstick on the points of my bosoms", "Remember to pull them back up" etc). The effect of the 1930s songs, a conceit that certainly works for the whole-series, is also comic, but frequently revealing and sometimes tragic. It shows that an alternate-approch, other than the obvious common to TV can be made- & pop-songs can express what people can't put into words (as PIL said, "Words cannot express"). 'Pennies from Heaven' strikes me as a perfect series in every detail...

The cast is brilliant- Hoskins, Craven & Campbell brilliant as the principles with great support from Colley, Nigel Havers, Hywel Bennett, Ronald Frazer, Freddie Jones, Peter Bowles, Dave King & many other faces common to British television.

'Pennies from Heaven', along with 'The Singing Detective' (1986) remains one of Potter's two complete-masterpieces and more than stands up today. Like 'Twin Peaks' it's a reminder of how potent and unconventional the medium of television can be (it's all list-shows, reality-shows, soap-operas, serial-killer-cliches and repeat, repeat, repeats these days...). Its incfluence is more than apparent in such films as 'Blue Velvet', 'Everyone Says I Love You', 'Mulholland Drive', & 'Moulin Rouge'; avoid the dubious Hollywood-movie of this starring Steve Martin however...


still a benchmark   January 11, 2005
 16 out of 16 found this review helpful

Bowled over by this when it was first shown on PBS, back in the late seventies I think, I've been impatient for a revisit ever since, and snapped it up the minute it appeared on DVD. Does it live up to my own pre-billing, after more than 20 years? In summary, yes. In fact it far exceeds it, even though it isn't what I recall.
First of all my memory contains a black-and-white version and this one is in colour, so whether our TV at that time was B&W or PBS showed it that way, I'm not sure. Secondly it stands so far apart from anything I've watched on TV in the two decades since I first saw it that it shocks like an ice-shower. "An outstanding example of how television can be a distinctive art form," says the snippet from John O'Connor of the New York Times on the box. Agreed whole heartedly, but who has followed that example? "Pennies from Heaven" throws a harsh light on the banalities we accept as entertainment from today's TV. It is tough, uncompromising and scathingly honest about us and the world we live in, in ways that Hollywood and the major TV producers cannot begin to imitate. Even some of the acclaimed BBC imports of recent times, Zhivago, Lost Prince, pale alongside it and as disturbing a film as American Beauty (which I like) feels manipulative and lacking in conviction by comparison.
The performance of Hoskins is as outstanding as I had recalled. But I had forgotten how good the rest of the cast is: Gemma Craven strangely evoking the corseted girlfriend in Billy Liar; Cheryl Campbell a dazzling concoction of primness, sensuality and inner steel; Kenneth Colley the epitome of all the world's discards - subtly painted as a Hoskins minus the panache and after a few wrong turns in the road. Even Hywel Bennett (whatever happened to him?) produces a fine ten-second-smoothie/pimp. Potter's grit, in-your-face talent and sheer imagination shines through more than seven hours of tour de force. Of course there is unevenness: the first episode takes a while to catch its rhythm and, to me, Hoskins' soul-baring speech to his salesmen cronies at the breakfast table, meant to be one of the keystones of the piece, doesn't quite come off. But these are minor quibbles set against the stratospheric standard of the series as a whole.
I hesitated to enter this opinion because the review by Gavin Wilson just about says it all. But in a TV world of artistic forgery, bluster, throw-away drama and just plain dross, a work like this deserves all the promotion it can get. No, it is not "entertainment" in the currently-accepted sense of the word. It demands too much of you. Potter seems to recognize that by inserting a kind of "faux happy ending" as if to mock us and our expectations of popular TV. But if you care about drama, acting, and the state of the human spirit, you need to see Pennies from Heaven.
However many stars Amazon lets you attach to a review, this work warrants them all.