Synopsis
Al Bowlly obsessive, David Peters (Ian Holm), is visited in his run-down bedsit by Marie (Deborah Grant), a researcher for Severn Television, who is collecting material for a documentary about the singer. David is the editor of the Al Bowlly Appreciation Society fanzine and Marie hopes to secure him as the programme advisor. David is enthusiastic about the offer but has other things on his mind; he has an appointment with an NHS psychiatrist the following day and his anxiety about the meeting, coupled with the novelty of entertaining his beautiful visitor, leads him to make an unwelcome pass at her. Marie fights off his advances and runs out the flat, leaving a defeated David to reflect on his problems.
In the waiting room the next day, David gets into an altercation with an elderly patient who has never heard of Al Bowlly. By the time he is finally called to see Dr Chilton (Anthony Bate), David is agitated by the older man's ignorance – especially as today is the anniversary of Bowlly's death. The doctor's calm demeanour, however, soon puts David at ease and, with some difficulty, David explains that his mother died six weeks earlier after having nursed her throughout his adult life and harrowingly recounts how, at the age of ten, he was abducted by a stranger and sexually assaulted. Alongside these traumatic events, David hints at some "wicked" acts he has committed but Chilton stops him before he can elaborate on these and prescribes him some anti-depressants. He is warned not to drink alcohol or eat cheese while taking the tablets as they will "make [his] tongue wag."
After David leaves, Chilton informs the two student doctors who have been in attendance throughout the session that he believes David's claustrophobic relationship with his disabled mother and the earlier torment of sexual abuse have resulted in a sense of sexual disgust that he overcomes in his obsession with the innocent music of Al Bowlly. Chilton dismisses his junior colleagues' concerns that David may attempt suicide and suggests it is more likely that the desperate desire to discharge his secrets will perhaps lead him to confide in a friend.
Later that evening, David attends the annual meeting of the Al Bowlly Appreciation Society. Relieved that his ordeal with the psychiatrist is over, David forgets the warning not to mix his medication with alcohol and drinks heavily. After much merriment, the Society President calls David up on stage to talk about the success of the fanzine. As David holds forth in his speech about the beauty and innocence of Bowlly's music his mind wanders back to the sexual assault and, realising he is surrounded by friends whose attitudes to love and sex match his own, reveals that he has slept with 136 prostitutes. As he leaves the stage and the scandalised Society members return to their festivities, a jubilant David approaches a large blow-out of Bowlly mounted on the wall. He smiles: "Good old Al!"
Music
(All songs recorded by Al Bowlly and the Lew Stone Orchestra)
Songs quoted in dialogue but do not feature on the soundtrack include:
Production
Kenith Trodd, Potter's producer and long-time friend since their days at Oxford, introduced the author to the popular songs of the 1930s and 40s through an article he wrote for the university magazine Isis . Trodd acted as musical advisor on the play, a role he reprised for Potters later 'serials with songs' and the 1981 MGM film version of Pennies from Heaven .
Moonlight on the Highway contains a number of semi-autobiographical elements. In 1945 the ten-year-old Potter and his sister June went to stay with their mother's relatives in Hammersmith, West London. Potter shared a bedroom with his bachelor uncle Ernie who sexually abused him. Potter first spoke publicly about the event in his introduction to Waiting for the Boat (published 1984) and later during his James MacTaggart Memorial Lecture at the 1993 Edinburgh Television Festival. The main character of Moonlight appears to live in Hammersmith and it is established during a montage sequence that the abuse David suffers occurred sometime around VJ Day, as Potter declared his had.
In Humphrey Carpenter's 1998 Potter biography, Kenith Trodd claimed that at an unspecified point in the early 1960s Potter confessed to having regularly used prostitutes while working in London; the number of women he visited allegedly matched the number of David Peters' conquests in Moonlight. Gareth Davies, who directed several of Potter's plays in the 1960s, also claims that Potter admitted to using prostitutes around this time but this time the number was much higher. These claims, however, have not been substantiated.
The play text was substantially cut for time, with twenty minutes of material featuring David's encounters with prostitutes being excised.
Style and themes
The play is structured as a nonlinear narrative. The main action of the drama takes place at Chilton's practice, while other scenes (David's attempt to seduce Marie and the meeting of the Al Bowlly Appreciation Society) are incorporated as flashbacks or flashforwards. David's memories of sexual abuse and the death of his mother are represented with overlays and montage sequences, accompanied by Al Bowlly music on the soundtrack.
Potter uses Bowlly's songs to represent both David's desire to return to innocence and as a means for the character to express through Bowlly's lyrics the emotions that he can never express in his own words. When David unsuccessfully attempts to seduce Marie he plays her "Just Let Me Look at You" in the hope that Bowlly's words will make her understand his desire, while during his meeting with Dr Chilton he recites the lyrics of several Bowlly songs to explain the horror of his ordeal at the hands of his abuser. Potter's witty resetting of the meaning behind the Bowlly tracks used throughout the drama finds its apotheosis in the extra-diegetic, and ironic, use of "Lover, Come Back to Me" and "Easy Come, Easy Go": the former song accompanying David's memories of the assault, the latter as he attempts to recount his experiences to Chilton – suggesting the nature of his lost innocence.
Dennis Christopher George Potter was an English television dramatist, screenwriter and journalist. He is best known for his BBC television serials Pennies from Heaven (1978) and The Singing Detective (1986) as well as the BBC television plays Blue Remembered Hills (1979) and Brimstone and Treacle (1976). His television dramas mixed fantasy and reality, the personal and the social, and often used themes and images from popular culture. Potter is widely regarded as one of the most influential and innovative dramatists to have worked in British television.
Albert Allick Bowlly was a South African-British vocalist, crooner and dance band guitarist who was Britain's most popular singer for most of the 1930s. He recorded upwards of 1,000 songs that were listened to by millions.
The Singing Detective is a six-part BBC television serial drama, written by Dennis Potter, starring Michael Gambon and directed by Jon Amiel. Its six episodes are "Skin", "Heat", "Lovely Days", "Clues", "Pitter Patter" and "Who Done It".
The Singing Detective is a 2003 American musical crime comedy film directed by Keith Gordon and loosely based on the BBC serial of the same name, a work by British writer Dennis Potter. It stars Robert Downey Jr. and features a supporting cast that includes Katie Holmes, Adrien Brody, Robin Wright Penn, Mel Gibson, Jeremy Northam and Carla Gugino as well as a number of songs from the 1950s.
Pennies from Heaven is a 1978 BBC musical drama serial written by Dennis Potter. The title is taken from the song "Pennies from Heaven" written by Johnny Burke and Arthur Johnston. It was one of several Potter serials to mix the reality of the drama with a dark fantasy content, and the earliest of his works where the characters burst into extended performances of popular songs.
Piers Inigo Haggard, OBE was a British director who worked in film, television, and theatre.
Heart Gloucestershire was a British Independent Local Radio station owned and operated by Global Radio as part of the Heart network. It broadcast to Gloucestershire from studios in Gloucester.
Dreamchild is a 1985 British drama film written by Dennis Potter, directed by Gavin Millar, and produced by Rick McCallum and Kenith Trodd. The film, starring Coral Browne, Ian Holm, Peter Gallagher, Nicola Cowper and Amelia Shankley, is a fictionalised account of Alice Liddell, the child who inspired Lewis Carroll's 1865 novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
Pennies from Heaven is a 1981 American musical romantic drama film directed by Herbert Ross, based on the 1978 BBC television drama of the same name. Dennis Potter adapted his screenplay from the BBC series for American audiences, changing its setting from London and the Forest of Dean to Depression-era Chicago and rural Illinois.
Brimstone & Treacle is the soundtrack for the 1982 film adaptation of the play Brimstone and Treacle directed by Richard Loncraine and starring Denholm Elliott, Joan Plowright and Sting. Sting and The Police wrote most of the original material on the album. The rest of the soundtrack was made of songs by other acts signed to A&M like The Go-Go's and Squeeze and a couple of traditional songs performed by the Finchley Children's Music Group and the ad-hoc formed Brimstone Chorale.
"Double Dare" is the 24th episode of sixth season of the British BBC anthology TV series Play for Today. The episode was a television play that was originally broadcast on 6 April 1976. "Double Dare" was written by Dennis Potter, directed by John Mackenzie, produced by Kenith Trodd, and starred Alan Dobie.
Follow the Yellow Brick Road is a television play by Dennis Potter, first broadcast in 1972 as part of BBC Two's The Sextet series of eight plays featuring the same six actors. The play's central theme is of popular culture becoming the inheritor of religious scripture, which anticipated Potter's later serial Pennies from Heaven. The play's title is taken from the song used in The Wizard of Oz, another version of which features in the incidental music.
Blade on the Feather is a television drama by Dennis Potter, broadcast by ITV on 19 October 1980 as the first in a loosely connected trilogy of plays exploring language and betrayal. A pastiche of the John Le Carré spy thriller and transmitted eleven months after Anthony Blunt was exposed as the 'fourth man', the drama combines two of Potter's major themes: the visitation motif and political disillusionment. The play's title is taken from "The Eton Boating Song".
James MacTaggart was a Scottish television producer, director and writer. He worked in London from 1961.
Kenith Trodd is a British television producer best known for his professional association with television playwright Dennis Potter.
Rain on the Roof is a television drama by Dennis Potter, broadcast by ITV on 26 October 1980.
Cream in My Coffee is a television drama by Dennis Potter, broadcast on ITV on 2 November 1980 as the last in a loosely connected trilogy of plays exploring language and betrayal. A juxtaposition between youth and old age, the play combines a non-linear narrative with the use of popular music to heighten dramatic tension, a feature of much of Potter's work. Cream in My Coffee was awarded the Prix Italia for best drama in 1981 and Peggy Ashcroft gained a BAFTA Best Actress award in 1981. The play's title is taken from the popular song "You're the Cream in My Coffee", from the 1929 Broadway musical Hold Everything!
Blackeyes is a BBC television miniseries first broadcast in 1989, written and directed by Dennis Potter. It was adapted from Potter's novel of the same name.
Tirunilakanta Nayanar, also known as Tirunilakanta, Nilakantan and Tirunilakantar (Thiruneelakandar) was a Nayanar saint, venerated in the Hindu sect of Shaivism. He is generally counted as the second in the list of 63 Nayanars.
"Leeds United!" is the first episode of fifth season of the British BBC anthology TV series Play for Today. The episode was a television play that was originally broadcast on 31 October 1974. "Leeds United!" was written by Colin Welland, directed by Roy Battersby, produced by Kenith Trodd, and starred Lynne Perrie.
