Renny Rye Remembers… Karaoke

Director Renny Rye looks back on the part he played in Karaoke, one of television’s most unusual commissions – a unique collaboration between the BBC and Channel 4, engineered by the writing force that was the late Dennis Potter. Karaoke, along with its sister piece, Cold Lazarus, was broadcast in 1996 on both channels as a tribute to Potter – the man behind someone of British television’s most celebrated and groundbreaking moments – who had written both dramas in the knowledge that he was soon to die of cancer. Here, Renny Rye discusses how Karaoke fits alongside Potter’s other celebrated screenplays, looks back on the pressures that he faced in bringing Potter’s final works to reality and recalls his experiences working with an extraordinary cast, made up of some of the best of British acting talent, including Albert Finney, Keeley Hawes, Richard E Grant, Julie Christie, Anna Chancellor and Saffron Burrows.