Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2729 in DVD
• Released on: 2004-05-31
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 3
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 3
• Running time: 480 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Dennis Potter's astonishing six-part miniseries Pennies from Heaven remains one of the edgiest, most audacious things ever conceived for television. The story tells of one Arthur Parker (Bob Hoskins), a sheet-music salesman in 1930s England. Beaten down by economic hard times and the sexual indifference of his proper wife (Gemma Craven), Arthur cannot understand why his life can't be like the beautiful songs he loves. On a sales trip through the Forest of Dean, he meets a virginal rural woman (Cheryl Campbell) he suspects may be his ideal. Ruination follows. Punctuating virtually every scene is a vintage pop song--lip-synched and sometimes danced out by the characters. This startling innovation makes the contrast between Arthur's brutish life and his bourgeois dreams even more dramatic.

Potter's dark vision digs into British stoicism, sexual repression, the class system and even the coming of fascism in Europe. But it is especially poignant on the subject of the divide between art and reality. Piers Haggard directs the long piece with deft transitions between songs and story. (It was shot partly on multi-camera video, partly on film.) The cast is fine, especially the extraordinary Cheryl Campbell, who imbues her character with keen intelligence and no small measure of perversity. Bob Hoskins triumphs in his star-making part, bringing a demonic energy to his small-time Cockney, nearly bursting his button-down vests with frustration and appetite. Pennies from Heaven was remade in 1981 for the big screen (with Steve Martin), in an interesting, Potter-scripted adaptation; it's one of the reasons the original has been unavailable on home video for so long. --Robert Horton

DVD Description
Arthur, a sheet music salesman, has an ear for the hit tunes, but nobody will trust it. And his imagination often bursts into full song, building musical numbers around the greatest frustrations in his life. He meets an innocent young school teacher, Eileen, who seems to hear the same music, but when Eileen learns that he's married, and that she's pregnant with his child, she runs away. Arthur gives up everything to find and protect her, but fate and the music haven't finished with Arthur Parker.

Special Features

• Commentary on Episodes 1 and 6 with Piers Haggard and Kenith Trodd
  
• Photo Gallery

DVD Technical Information:

• Total Running Time: 480 minutes
  
• Region Code: 2

Customer Reviews

Simply Unmissable Potter
Releasing this Dennis Potter masterpiece on DVD is probably the smartest thing the BBC will do this year. In an age of throwaway programmes, endless reality shows and a production culture that is risk averse and aimed at the lowest common denominator, here's a chance to see how it used to be. Yes folks, telly generally was better all those years ago - and Pennies From Heaven sums up the era well. The passage of time proves that quality writing, acting and production never go out of style. What strikes me most about Pennies From Heaven now is how long it is - a 6 part serial that allowed the characters to develop, the story to unfold. Now, sadly, it would probably get the 2 hour treatment with the news bunged in the middle.

Previous reviewers have really said it all - and this DVD allows us to enjoy again and again what happens when fine writing, acting and production all magically come together. Outstanding central performances from the cast, with wonderful support from the likes of Freddie Jones and Hywel Bennett - and even a very youthful Nigel Havers! DVD extras are kept to a minimum - but this 3 disc set allows the beauty and craft of the story to come through strongly, proving the point that less can be more.

still a benchmark
Bowled over by this when it was first shown on PBS, back in the late seventies I think, I've been impatient for a revisit ever since, and snapped it up the minute it appeared on DVD. Does it live up to my own pre-billing, after more than 20 years? In summary, yes. In fact it far exceeds it, even though it isn't what I recall.
First of all my memory contains a black-and-white version and this one is in colour, so whether our TV at that time was B&W or PBS showed it that way, I'm not sure. Secondly it stands so far apart from anything I've watched on TV in the two decades since I first saw it that it shocks like an ice-shower. "An outstanding example of how television can be a distinctive art form," says the snippet from John O'Connor of the New York Times on the box. Agreed whole heartedly, but who has followed that example? "Pennies from Heaven" throws a harsh light on the banalities we accept as entertainment from today's TV. It is tough, uncompromising and scathingly honest about us and the world we live in, in ways that Hollywood and the major TV producers cannot begin to imitate. Even some of the acclaimed BBC imports of recent times, Zhivago, Lost Prince, pale alongside it and as disturbing a film as American Beauty (which I like) feels manipulative and lacking in conviction by comparison.
The performance of Hoskins is as outstanding as I had recalled. But I had forgotten how good the rest of the cast is: Gemma Craven strangely evoking the corseted girlfriend in Billy Liar; Cheryl Campbell a dazzling concoction of primness, sensuality and inner steel; Kenneth Colley the epitome of all the world's discards - subtly painted as a Hoskins minus the panache and after a few wrong turns in the road. Even Hywel Bennett (whatever happened to him?) produces a fine ten-second-smoothie/pimp. Potter's grit, in-your-face talent and sheer imagination shines through more than seven hours of tour de force. Of course there is unevenness: the first episode takes a while to catch its rhythm and, to me, Hoskins' soul-baring speech to his salesmen cronies at the breakfast table, meant to be one of the keystones of the piece, doesn't quite come off. But these are minor quibbles set against the stratospheric standard of the series as a whole.
I hesitated to enter this opinion because the review by Gavin Wilson just about says it all. But in a TV world of artistic forgery, bluster, throw-away drama and just plain dross, a work like this deserves all the promotion it can get. No, it is not "entertainment" in the currently-accepted sense of the word. It demands too much of you. Potter seems to recognize that by inserting a kind of "faux happy ending" as if to mock us and our expectations of popular TV. But if you care about drama, acting, and the state of the human spirit, you need to see Pennies from Heaven.
However many stars Amazon lets you attach to a review, this work warrants them all.

Bleak musical drama, from the mind of Dennis Potter...
By the time Pennies From Heaven was first broadcast in the spring of 1978, writer Dennis Potter - the enfant-terrible of British televisual drama - had already attracted a fair share of positive and negative criticism for his preceding works, Moonlight on the Highway, Double Dare and Casanova. This troika of bleak works, all of which were deeply self-referential and used the subtext of popular songs as an underpinning for the dark themes lurking beneath the polite veneer of normality, would very much define the style and concept of Pennies From Heaven, with Potter being awarded a greater degree of control over his material for the first time following the success of the three plays listed above and, of course, the mass tabloid controversy surrounding his previous piece, Brimstone & Treacle. Despite the greatness of those plays (Double Dare and Brimstone & Treacle in particular), it is safe to say that 'Pennies...' was a definite turning point for Potter, and a work of unbridled and undiluted creativity that would go into the creation of later classics like The Singing Detective, Black Eyes, or the earlier hit, Blue Remembered Hills.

The plot, as covered in more detail by other reviewers, seems fairly simplistic. Arthur, a amiable working-class Cockney, is trapped in a sexless marriage with staunched middle-class wife Joan, works long hours as a travelling sheet-music salesman, partakes of the occasional affair and, indulges himself in bouts of wild exaggeration amongst the other familiar-faced salesmen that he meets on his weekly rounds. For Arthur, this isn't just a job, but also an escape (both literal - in the sense that it gets him out of the house and away from the watchful eyes of polite society - and metaphoric, also), as he takes solace in the words and music of the romantic ballads that he foists upon local music shop stockists for the odd bob or too. The way in which Potter uses the songs and the way in which they have been integrated into the action is superb, and still seems revolutionary some twenty-six years after the programme's initial conception, as that opening scene, in which Arthur gazes wistfully into the bathroom mirror before suddenly breaking into song - or maybe not - as the rough and very much manly Arthur is merely lip-synching to some heartbreaking ode sung by a delicate young chanteuse!! This first instance of musical underpinning, as Potter not only hints at Arthur's state of mind through the contemplative lyrics, but also hints at a deeper fragility and sensitivity that is often lost in the pursuit of ladish bravado, is still one of the most astounding TV moments, with Potter and director Piers Haggard setting a scene that is surreal, fanciful and fabricated, but also overflowing with pain, angst, longing and degradation.

It is important for us to remember that Arthur, although out of step with the repressed, stiff-upper-lipped society in which he inhabits, is a creature desperate for love and physical understanding. His actions throughout the series might suggest otherwise (the frustration, sexual tension and occasional bouts of misogyny), he nonetheless is capable of moments of real warmth and tenderness, which is best illustrated in his growing relationship with Eileen as the story progresses. Although very much about Arthur and his journey, Potter also offers us two very complex female characters with Joan, Arthur's prim and proper wife of traditional middle-class values, and Eileen, the naïve yet passionate schoolteacher from the sheltered reaches of the forest of Dean. Both women love Arthur despite his actions and the reactions of those around him, and yet, we are left questioning throughout as to whether or not Arthur is the mind-mannered, though sexually frustrated dreamer we originally though, or if he is, perhaps, something much darker, and more predatory?

It would be wrong to go into any greater detail regarding the deeper implications of the plot... not least for those who've yet to see the programme, but also, because I'm not entirely sure I've grasped everything that Potter was getting at. Like his later masterpiece The Singing Detective, Pennies From Heaven is a series that works on multiple levels. On the one hand, it's a character piece... a journey for the character tied neatly into a format that has an almost "road-movie" quality to it. On top of that, it's a morality story... a play on the notion of fidelity and infidelity, love and lust, longing and perversion. On top of this we have a police story blurred by elements of self-referentialism... and then we have the music. The music is perfectly chosen, not only fitting the mood of the scene that it accompanies, but also revealing more about the characters and their situations through the lyrics and the tone of the singer's delivery. Sometimes the use of music can be comedic (or, darkly comedic), like, for example, in The Bad Man number, or it can be quite sinister... like the piece with the accordion man in the homeless shelter. More often, however, it evokes the sadness and longing at the heart of the characters.

The choreography, lighting, design and direction is impeccable throughout, with the crew using the limitation of having to combine studio filming and location filming to their advantage, by further juxtaposing the real with the bizarre. Although it's not as great as the Singing Detective, Pennies From Heaven is no less a work of genius. Though at times it can be quite frustrating, it is, nonetheless, a series that benefits greatly from multiple viewings, with each new viewing revealing a further interpretations that we may have missed before. The performances from the three leads are all great and help to carry the emotional weight of the project well (special mention to the supporting actors, dancers and technicians too) although it's Bob Hoskins lead performances as the complicated Arthur that is the real draw. Like most of the work of Dennis Potter, Pennies From Heaven is a rich and complex musical parable that has stood the test of time perfectly.