The Making of Artistic Reputation: Dennis Potter, Television Dramatist

Abstract

Within the context of canonization processes, the career course of the British television dramatist Dennis Potter presents a unique case. Potter's career illustrates an instance of a dramatist also acting as a multifunctional media figure, who superseded the ‘typical’ primary makers of reputation (e.g. critics and academics) in shaping the perceptions of his work and in promoting his dramatic standing. Potter's authoritative power was facilitated by the infancy of television reviewing and television drama in the early 1960s. Given the innovative nature of his dramas, often extremely controversial, the reputation he achieved was largely the effect of his acquired fame as a media figure and, particularly, the evaluative criteria he himself established as a pioneering television critic: an expertise he further exploited as major commentator on his own work, all of which not only conditioned the reception of his works, but also influenced their eventual critical acclaim.