Television producer whose long-running partnership with Dennis Potter resulted in landmark drama serials including Pennies from Heaven and The Singing Detective Kenith Trodd, who has died aged 90, was one of Britain’s most successful television drama producers, commissioning contemporary, cutting-edge plays from writers such as Colin Welland , Jim Allen , GF Newman , Stephen Poliakoff and Simon Gray . However, he will be best remembered for his long-running partnership with the writer Dennis Potter in productions that extended the landscape and creative possibilities of drama on the small screen and often challenged moral values. Their shared interest in popular music of the 1930s and 40s bore fruit most productively – and controversially – in the serials Pennies from Heaven (1978) and The Singing Detective (1986) after Trodd gave Potter the chance to switch from writing single plays to “television novels”. In the former, a seller of song sheets ( Bob Hoskins ) travels the country cheating on his wife as he steps out of the drama to dance and mime to sentimental numbers of the 1930s whose optimism provides relief from the Depression. Continue reading...