BBC, British Rival Honor Dramatist’s Dying Wish

Imagine, if you will, NBC and CBS collaborating to finance and broadcast the last two works of an outstanding TV dramatist--and even cooperating over air times to avoid a scheduling clash.

Such a thing could never happen, right?

That’s what everyone in Britain’s TV industry assumed--yet the British Broadcasting Corp. and its commercial rival Channel 4 have taken this unprecedented step in jointly airing two four-hour works by Dennis Potter, who died in 1994.

“Karaoke,” starring Albert Finney and Julie Christie, is being broadcast on BBC-1 on Sundays, and repeated the following nights on Channel 4. Potter’s “Cold Lazarus,” also starring Finney, will air Sundays on Channel 4, beginning May 26, with reruns on BBC-1 on each of the four following days.

Potter wrote primarily for TV and is considered Britain’s greatest dramatist in the medium. His 1986 series “The Singing Detective,” which aired in the United States on PBS, is widely considered one of the most outstanding dramas ever written for television; in 1992, the Museum of Television & Radio in New York held a Potter retrospective.

The writer, a controversial figure in Britain, became known for series with characters who suddenly burst into song, which the actors lip-synced; he employed the device in “The Singing Detective,” “Pennies From Heaven” (which was also adapted for the big screen) and “Lipstick on Your Collar.” His work--in which expletives abounded, sexuality was treated candidly and religious belief ruthlessly analyzed--was attacked by critics as obscene and blasphemous.

These arrangements between rival broadcasters are even more extraordinary because Potter requested them as a dying wish.

Three months before his death from pancreatic cancer, he recorded a remarkable interview with broadcaster Melvyn Bragg, which aired on Channel 4. In pain, and sipping from a flask of liquid morphine, Potter revealed on camera that he was involved in a race against time to complete “Karaoke” and “Cold Lazarus” before he died.

Then, out of the blue, he requested that the two works be broadcast by both companies. It was no idle demand. Potter was a longtime, fierce advocate of British public service broadcasting traditions, which he feared were being eroded by market forces and commercial considerations; to him only the BBC and Channel 4 offered any hope of resisting the trend.

Potter’s dying request took executives at the two companies by surprise.

“When I saw the tape, I just roared with laughter,” said his friend Michael Grade, Channel 4’s chief executive. “It was wonderful mischief. There was a boyish, childlike quality about Dennis, and this was typical.”

Alan Yentob, controller of BBC-1, described Potter’s last proposal as “an offer you can’t refuse.”

The works are thematically linked and deal with the role and power of writers. In “Karaoke,” Finney plays Daniel Feeld, a screenwriter who comes to realize that a fictional script of his, which is being filmed, is being played out in his real life. “Cold Lazarus” is set in the year 2368, when there are no democratic governments, just global corporations; Feeld had his head cryonically frozen on his death in the 20th century to preserve his brain, and 400 years later a scheming TV mogul wants access to the head and memory because it would make “great television.”

The BBC and Channel 4 agreed in principle within days to honor Potter’s request. But the original plan for them to split costs 50-50 became a problem. “Cold Lazarus,” first commissioned by Channel 4, is the more expensive work because of its science-fiction setting; Potter explicitly demanded state-of-the-art digital effects.

Finally, Channel 4 put up 60% of the $15-million production budget for both works and the BBC the rest. The companies placed bids for world rights in sealed envelopes; Channel 4 won at a cost of 1.2 million pounds ($1.8 million). But no international sales have been announced yet, so it isn’t known when the two programs will be seen in the United States.

Potter nominated the producers and director--and even crew members--to make his final works. They included his longtime collaborator Kenith Trodd, who produced “The Singing Detective” and “Pennies From Heaven”--even though the two men had become estranged in Potter’s later years. Potter named as his other producer Rosemarie Whitman, who had taken Trodd’s place on his productions from 1989 on.

“What Dennis did with that request was clever showmanship,” Grade said. “The circumstances, the novelty, the uniqueness of the scheduling has lifted the whole thing into the status of a TV event.”