Dennis Potter’s 1978 BBC series Pennies from Heaven introduced audiences to the rough-and-tumble charms of Bob Hoskins, who played a pre-war sheet music salesman, and to its author’s habit, later seen in The Singing Detective and Lipstick on Your Collar, of mixing harshly realistic scenes with fantasy interludes showing characters lip-synching to nostalgic old standards.
The material’s blend of playfulness and foreboding were expertly managed in Pennies from Heaven by the director Piers Haggard, who has died aged 83. Writing in this paper, Nancy Banks-Smith called the series “quite extraordinary.”
