The Singing Detective

I've just started watching Dennis Potter's series The Singing Detective. The scripts are so well structured and the attention to detail is fabulous. The imagery, as previously discussed with George, is so important to this and it makes me realise how important it is to crime fiction. A perfect example;

'It was cold waiting for Amanda to come out. The air was like an Eskimo's mother-in-law; bitter and icy. But not as icy as the heart which beat under his cashmere coat. He intended to warm himself on her overpriced flesh.'

It's lines like this that reminded me, slightly, of a bit I wrote in a short story a few years ago;

'Mad, mad is good. As long as it's only one bun short of a bakery and not bricks, cement, manpower, business plans and buns short of a bakery, it should be fine. I've just noticed how hungry I am - very.'

That's a few lines I'm happy with and would like to recreate somehow. Potter's line clearly plays on a cliché and yet it takes it a step further. And that's what I was doing with the bakery line.

Another piece that has been sitting in my mind is the way Philip Marlow (Potter's protagonist, notice the missing 'e') describes people outside as 'chewing' each other. There's something in that, the consumption of the outside world, the way in which people treat each other. I will come back to this later.