Follow the Yellow Brick Road

"Follow the Yellow Brick Road" (1972) by Dennis Potter - not a Play for Today this time, but part of a BBC 2 series called Sextet.
The played featured Denholm Elliot as an actor who is undergoing psychiatric treatment; he believes himself to be trapped in a television play. He explains to his doctor how he has only been able to find work in television commercials, although he prefers these to plays as he finds the latter morally corrupting.
The production is lively, with the action broken up by a series of mock commercials for cereal and dog food. The former sees Elliot getting up in the night for a midnight snack, stepping down a metal spiral staircase into a living room bedecked with jewels and a beautiful woman reclined on a couch. His hand tentatively pushes open the pantry door to reveal his wife secretly helping herself to the Krispy Krunch. This scene is recalled later in the play, this time to reveal his wife in bed with his agent.

Here is Potter on the subject of television advertising, speaking shortly after the release of The Singing Detective

Where Adam Stood

Dennis Potter's adaptation of Edmund Gosse's 'Father & Son' was screened in 1976. It is the story of Edmund and his father, the naturalist and minister Philip Gosse. The Gosse household, which is held together by religious piety and strict bible study, is suffering the recent loss of Edmund's mother.
Gosse believes the story of Genesis to be literary true, but his own research into marine life challenges this belief, as does the forthcoming publication of Darwin's 'Origins of the Species by Means of Natural Selection'.
Gosse's conclusion is to place himself 'where Adam stood' - he would see fully grown flora and fauna on the day of his creation, meaning God had created the world fully formed and thereby fitting in with the recent discoveries of fossils showing the natural world was far older than the Bible would suppose.
It is clear to see that even he acknowledges the weaknesses in his own argument, meanwhile the young Edmund too is learning how to play against his father's religious beliefs when he tells how God has allowed him to have a boat he covets in the toy shop window - something his father had forbidden him to even think about.
The play contains two instances of the kind of scenes we are more used to seeing with Potter - a mad woman who attempts to sexually assault Edmund, and depictions of the boy's nightmares, in which he is approached by a Christ figure who tries to lure him into the sea.
The feel of the play, and the scenes on the beach are reminiscent of certain Pre-Raphaelite paintings - this one in particular: WILLIAM DYCE, 'Pegwell Bay, Kent, a Recollection of October 5th 1858'

Dennis Potter's Alice

Potter's 1964 play was focused on Charles Dodgson's (Carroll) relationship with Alice Liddell and the creation of his most famous work.

Don't Vote Vote Vote

With an election looming, here's the Dennis Potter method for getting rid of unwanted canvassers, from 'Vote Vote for Nigel Barton'

The woman on the doorstep who says she hasn't vote in 50 years, on asked whether she thought she 'ought' to:

"Ought? Ought" Did you say Ought? "There's too much ought, sonny. Ought to have a telly licence. Ought to have a dog licence. Ought to keep the hedge cut. Ought to pay the rates on time. Ought to wash your hands after using the lav. Ought to pay threepence for it too. Ought to got to church. Ought to stand for the national anthem. Ought to help the hungry. Ought to avoid the rush hour. Ought not to drink and drive. Ought to post early for Christmas. Ought to be thankful. And all the oughts is about money, sonny....and nobody says they ought to give me that."

..."I'm in sympathy with none of you. All promises now, ennit? Butter wouldn't melt in your mouths, would it? Then up go prices, up go rents, up goes the electricity, the gas, the coal, up go fags, and God knows what else. Right up, I know, oh I know all right. You can't kid me, sonny.
..."And I can't stop gassing no more. Got the dinner going. And I ought to get that ready, oughtn't I?"

CROOKT, CRACKT, OR FLY

Angels Are So Few (1970) by Dennis Potter

This is the first of Potter's visitation plays (see also Schmoedipus, Brimstone & Treacle), featuring Michael, an 'angel' who visits Cynthia, a bored and frustrated housewife. The question of whether Michael really is an angel is not clear - his 'curse', "I feel very sorry for you" seems to result in two deaths; the sneering postman and the elderly Mr Cawser, plus he also seems to be able to transport himself to the scene of the postman's accident while sat at Cynthia's kitchen table. On the evening after her first visit, Cynthia watches a TV 'Epilogue' delivered by a priest who reminds the viewer that angels were messengers from god who sometimes were the deliverers of death.
It's only at the end of the play, after he has been seduced by Cynthia, that the truth is revealed, although not in an altogether satisfactory manner. Potter has been here before. His Jesus in 'Son of Man' could quite as easily be a mortal man who is under the delusion that he is the Messiah - something which at the time aroused the irie of Mary Whitehouse et al.