Cold Lazarus
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- This article is about the Dennis Potter TV serial. For the Stargate SG-1 episode of the same name, see Cold Lazarus (Stargate SG-1). For other uses of the name Lazarus, see Lazarus (disambiguation).
| Cold Lazarus | |
|---|---|
| Genre | Drama |
| Creator(s) | Dennis Potter |
| Starring | Albert Finney |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| No. of episodes | 4 |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | Channel 4 |
| Original run | 1996 – |
Cold Lazarus is a British television four-part drama written by Dennis Potter with the knowledge that he was dying from cancer of the pancreas.
It forms the second half of a pair with the television serial Karaoke. The two serials were filmed as a single production by the same team; both were directed by Renny Rye and feature Albert Finney as the writer Daniel Feeld. The plays were unique in being co-productions between the BBC and Channel 4, something Potter had expressly requested before his death. The show was first aired on Channel 4 in 1996 on Sunday evenings, with a repeat on BBC1 the following day.
Parts of Karaoke and Cold Lazarus were filmed in the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire, which is where Dennis Potter was born and raised, and children from local schools including St. Briavels Parochial Primary School starred in the film as extras in flashbacks.
Unfortunately, a side effect of his last wishes for the BBC and Channel 4 to collaborate on these works has been that the copyright and further usage rights to the works has remained unclear. For this reason neither Karaoke or Cold Lazarus are available on DVD.
Other notable cast members include:
- Frances de la Tour as Emma Porlock
- Ciarán Hinds as Fyodor Glazunov
- Grant Masters as Tony Watson
- Carmen Ejogo as Blinda
Additionally, some of the cast of Karaoke appear in Feeld's flashbacks.
[edit] Plot
In a distant dystopian future (a nod to the show Blake's 7), researchers study the cryonically-preserved head of Daniel Feeld, a twentieth-century writer, attempting to extract and record his memories in a form that can be broadcast as the latest version of reality television.
As they seek out the writer's most explicit and painful (and therefore most marketable) memories, one of the researchers becomes convinced that the head is regaining consciousness during their experiments.
Meanwhile, beyond the laboratory, other forces gather.
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