TV Reviews : A Melancholy Slide Into Memory From Dennis Potter

An aging husband and wife enter a suite in a frayed seaside resort hotel. They are hoping to bring back the romantic past, specifically their daring premarital fling in this very same suite nearly half a century earlier.

Dennis Potter’s “Cream in Your Coffee” is drenched in melancholy that is genuine, poignant and ironic. The 90-minute British feature, an L.A.-area broadcast premiere, lights up the “Dennis Potter Showcase” tonight at 10 on KCET Channel 28.

Dame Peggy Ashcroft and Lional Jeffries, the brittle old couple whose love has soured, are achingly authentic as relics of a sort beating their boats against the tide. What catapults the story is its split focus between the past and the present.

The script continually segues to the couple as innocent young lovers (Shelagh McLeod and Peter Chelsom) enjoying a tryst at the hotel in 1934. Despite the golden haze of their frolic and their undying love, you see the emotional creases in these people that inform the acrimony at the end of their lives.

The hotel--a perfect Potter touch--is also a major player in “Cream in Your Coffee” (a hit period song providing lyrical irony). The contrast between the lush, glamorous 1930s hotel by the seashore and its raggedy descent into an echoing resort for the geriatric set is a wicked metaphor for the whole story. There’s also a devilish portrayal by Martin Shaw of a cad who’s one sweet crooner.

The production’s last scene, on a punk rock/ballroom floor with Jeffries’ balding husband deliriously caught in a time warp, is a leave-you-limp knockout punch, dynamically staged by director Gavin Millar.

Finally, “Pennies From Heaven”-Potter catches the glaze of memory as it takes over your life. “That’s the trouble,” the husband laments at one point. “Everything is as if it was yesterday.”