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. However, presently (July 2007) both are available to watch online via the Channel 4 website, and Virgin Media's on demand service.
Other notable cast members include:
Additionally, some of the cast of Karaoke appear in Feeld's flashbacks.
Dr. Emma Porlock and her colleagues, attempting to unlock the secrets of human memory for the Masdon drug empire, get a cryogenically stored 400-year-old human head to project its memories through virtual reality displays. But Porlock and her team are chronically under-funded, and she may have to go around Masdon to a media sleaze merchant to get the money she needs to maintain the project. But an even more complex world of secret police, RON (Reality-Or-Nothing) riots, and murder is going on outside the lab. And the deeper Porlock goes into the frozen memories of the writer Daniel Feeld, the more twisted the labyrinth of intrigue becomes. Written by Kathy Li
Writer Daniel Feeld (Albert Finney), first seen in Dennis Potter's Karaoke, returns three centuries later as a disembodied head. While technology has advanced in the 24th Century, global corporate control has brought about an austere, antiseptic way of life. In the year 2368, the terrorist organization RON (Reality or Nothing), seeks a return to the tranquillity of earlier times. At the Masdon Science Center, a team of scientists led by Emma Porlock (Frances De La Tour) succeeds in extracting memories from Feeld's cryogenically preserved head - memories which are, in fact, scenes from Karaoke. Aging Martina Masdon (Diane Ladd), the tyrannical owner of the Science Center, and international media mogul David Siltz (Henry Goodman) see the potential for the commercial exploitation of Feeld's memories. As Siltz puts it, "Who would want made-up stories from a hack when you can mainline into the real thing? At last, privacy has a true market value." Written by Bhob Stewart
