Pennies from Heaven

Dennis Potter's most popular television drama, Pennies from Heaven, 'a play with music, in six parts', was first shown in 1978 on BBC1. Set in the thirties, it starred Bob Hoskins and concerned the amorous and geographical wanderings of a travelling sheet music salesman, who is both fortunate and unfortunate enough to believe in the songs in his suitcase. When it was first shown, the free-flowing movement from fact to fiction and back again, shown by characters suddenly performing to old recordings of thirties hit tunes to illustrate their longings, and then returning again to their humdrum lives, was startling and innovatory.