Obituary: Dennis Potter

FACED with such a remarkable body of work to cover, Mark Lawson, in his obituary of Dennis Potter (8 June), perhaps understandably gives the film Gorky Park (1983) only a brief mention, writes James Essinger. Potter's adaptation, however, was masterly; not only in improving the structure and clarifying the plot of Martin Cruz Smith's novel, but also in creating superbly terse, tense, pithy dialogue filled with resonanes which brilliantly captured the neurosis, fear and pitiful hunger for Western consumerism of the pre-glasnost Soviet Union.

Of course it will be as a television writer that Dennis Potter will be best remembered, but his achievement in Gorky Park deserves wider recognition.