Starring: Michael Gambon, Patrick Malahide, Joanne Whalley-Kilmer, Janet Suzman

From one of the great experimentalists of TV drama comes one of the greatest serials of recent years, a cunning and compellingly original tour-de-force which mingles fantasy and reality with the haunting hit songs of the 1940's. The award-winning The Singing Detective - acclaimed as Dennis Potter's masterpiece - is a dazzlingly entertaining and multi-layered mystery thriller with a distinguished cast.

Wracked by a terrible skin disease, the unsuccessful writer Phillip Marlow looks cynically back on life from his bed in a busy National Health hospital, fantasising himself into one of his own pulp thrillers as a crooning '40's detective enmeshed in a baffling murder case. But memories of his wartime childhood keep intruding - as do songs like "Blues in the Night", "Dry Bones" and "Cruising Down The River". Unwillingly, Marlow agrees to talk to a psychotherapist - and, slowly, the clues begin to add up. But to what?

DVD Extras: Commentary with director Jon Amiel and producer Kenneth Trodd. Close Up: Dennis Potter. Arena: Dennis Potter. Filmographies. Photo gallery. Points of View.

From one of the great experimentalists of TV drama comes one of the greatest serials of recent years, a cunning an

thriller, mystery, wartime