From September 1985 in The Sunday Times:

The project ... is The Singing Detective, seven-and-half hours of drama due to start shooting in January which, says Potter, will make Pennies from Heaven look like a rehearsal. It is about a writer of cheap detective fiction (Michael Gambon is likely to play the role) in hospital with 100% psoriasis. He loses control of his body temperature and starts to fantasise. This is something which happened to Potter himself, although he claims the series is not autobiographical.

'I'm playing with the conventions - the musical convention, the situation comedy convention, the detective story convention - in order to try to see what TV drama can do,' he says, 'Once I'd got my skates on, I just felt I could fly with it.

'I think the days of the single play are more or less over, unfortunately. The series is the one thing left now which can do what the cinema and stage can't - take seven or eight hours to develop characters and situations.'

From March 1986, also in The Sunday Times:

Says Malahide: 'People ask me what it's about and all I can say is that it's a psychological case history, seen in terms of a detective novel, set to music!'