Dead Head is a slightly infamous four episode mini-series that aired on the BBC in 1986. It was rather controversial at the time (likely for a number of reasons, including the confusing plot, the full frontal male and female nudity, the torture scenes, and well everything else) and aired only once before its release on DVD in 2013. It’s well known amongst Lawson fans as the source of several thirst gifs, including the ones of him in the bath tub and in the fourties’ bomber jacket.
It has a tendency to turn up on people’s recommendation lists for Lawson stuff because of said thirst reasons, as well as it being a show that features him heavily (he’s in every scene), but I warn you: the plot makes no sense. This is largely intentional.
Content warning: look, they give this thing a 15, but that doesn’t really describe quite what the hell is going on here. Violence, sex, and just. There’s a lot okay.
About
The first episode of Dead Head, ‘Why Me?’, aired on the 15th January 1986 on BBC Two. Made in-house at the BBC by Pebble Mill, it was written by Howard Brenton, directed by Rob Walker, and produced by Robin Midgeley. This episode stars Denis Lawson as ‘Eddie Cass’, Lindsay Duncan as ‘Dana Cass’, Simon Callow as ‘Hugo Silver’, George Baker as ‘Eldridge’ and Norman Beaton as ‘Caractacus’.
This is the first of two things Lawson and Duncan were in in 1986; they’d later star together in the second season of the Kit Curran show, where they still play love interests—of a kind—but the dynamic is very different.
Availability: Out on DVD in the UK since 2013. Howard Brenton did a commentary for the first two episodes which serves to illuminate just how it ended up so bizarre.
Both Howard Brenton and Rob Walker are primarily known for their theatre work—in fact, Rob Walker directed Lawson in Pal Joey (1980)—and actually, this entire series makes more sense if you start to consider it less as a TV series and more as four mini interlinked plays. They set out to do something different, show that television could be made a different way. Whatever your feelings on this series are, it was not a popular take. Walker never did any TV work again, and it was 16 years before Brenton wrote on another TV serial. The entire series was written in about ten days mid-1985, which explains some of the less than well thought out plot—Brenton has admitted he would rewrite elements of the show now.
Continue reading “Dead Head, Episode One: Why Me?”
