Lipstick on Your Collar (1993)

The lightest and most purely fun of the song serials, and the last broadcast in Potter's lifetime. Six episodes on Channel 4 in early 1993, set in a military intelligence office in Whitehall in 1956 as the Suez crisis builds. Ewan McGregor, in his first major role, plays Mick Hopper, a national service clerk translating Russian documents who daydreams his stuffy colleagues into rock and roll numbers, with Connie Francis's title song opening each episode. If The Singing Detective feels like too much to start with, this romantic comedy is the friendliest way in to how Potter uses songs.