The Singing Detective, 1986

This BBC miniseries, written by Dennis Potter, is a real litmus test for how dark you like your dark humor. It is also one of a very few television productions that makes the medium worthwhile. Michael Gambon plays a hospitalized mystery writer with a crippling mix of psoriasis and arthritis who, to cope with the pain, loses himself as he plots out his next novel. Gambon's character, Philip Marlow, inserts himself into his own novel as a 1940s-era big band singer cum detective. As the patient's pain grows increasingly unbearable, he escapes more and more into this fantasy as well as remembrances from his childhood, eventually unable to distinguish characters in the novel (including himself) from the reality of his bedridden hospital stay. Philip Marlow starts with misanthropy and grows bleaker as his pain deepens. The character remains fascinating to watch because his passions persist in spite of his handicaps. He still flirts with nurses and spars with his psychiatrist. Michael Gambon imbues his character with a ferocity of spirit that even deep depression and near paralysis cannot subdue. This is most evident in a strident catalog of things Philip Marlow believes in, which include "cigarettes alcohol but above all else, most of all the one thing that can come out of people's mouths...." But to find out what that one thing is, you'll have to watch The Singing Detective.

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