Known for his stage plays (such as Forty Years On, 1968) and feature films (such as The Madness of King George, 1995). as well as his writing for television. Bennett wrote the first series after experimenting  with the format in the 1982 television and radio play A Woman of No Importance. In an interview with Albert Hunt. Bennett claimed that the simple format and economy of production of A Woman of No Importance was partly inspired by his own original desire to direct. something he had never done before on stage or television. Yet Bennett may have recognized the dramatic possibilities of the form while delivering satirical monologues on stage as part of Beyond  the  Fringe  at the Edinburgh Festival in 1960. In  the event.  Bennett did not direct A Woman of No Importance, but he was able to go on and direct one of the dramas in the first series of Talking Heads, "Bed Among the Lentils," and act in another, "A Chip in the Sugar."

     Crucially. the monologue format, with an almost static camera. pared-down visuals, and direct address, allowed Bennett to demonstrate his finely tuned sense of observation which explored the warm humor of the everyday, while also drawing on some of the darker themes of his larger oeuvre. The themes of Talking Heads are distinctly adult, not in the sense that there are explicit sexual references or bad language, but because they are predominantly about, and performed by, people in middle age or older, particularly women.

     With scripts written with particular performers in mind (recurring names being Patricia Routledge. Julie Walters, and Thora Hird) colloquialisms or turns of phrase powerfully evoke a specific class. region. or generation. Bennett's scripts depict ordinary people trapped by frustration or loneliness. people marginalized, often by the most mundane circumstances. and out of touch with mainstream cosmopolitan and popular culture. Most of the stories. running between 30 and 50 minutes. are set in a drab suburban or provincial milieu-often signified by dull domestic settings such as living rooms or kitchens.

     Yet what is also significant about Bennett's Talking Heads scripts is what is often not said. or only vaguely hinted at-with implicit references to mental illness, repressed homosexuality, or sexual abuse. As each drama unfolds over a series of  sequences-with  the told events predominantly taking a downward trajectory-the viewer gains more insight into the character and what motivates them. sometimes with surprising consequences. In "A Woman of Letters," for example. Patricia Routledge plays Miss Ruddock. a lonely woman who obsessively writes letters of complaint. At first appearing to be a public-spirited busybody. it soon becomes apparent that she has caused upset with accu­ sations of child abuse and neglect. and has been before the courts on charges of harassment. The program concludes with Miss Ruddock in jail, yet a more fulfilled and less lonely woman.

     Significantly, the program format not only emphasizes the strength of writing, but also of theatrical per­formance. and this has two closely related dramatic effects. First, the mid- to close-up shots of actors speaking directly to camera demands carefully nuanced and intimate performances, with actors unable to hide in the long shot, or among other characters. Furthermore, long takes (some lasting as long as eleven minutes) add an extra layer of tension to the performance. Second, as Albert Hunt argues, the direct address to camera establishes a theatrical relationship between actor and audience, unlike the action between characters viewed by an audience separated by a fourth wall.

     This direct address, alienating and adding to the "staginess" of the drama on the one hand, fuses profoundly with the subject matter, on the other, as the narration of what Hunt describes as "gossip" treats the viewer as a confidante or friend. This has much in common with what the psychologists Donald Horton and R. Richard Wohl described it as a "parasocial interaction," where direct address to camera emulates the basic form of human face-to-face interaction, establishing a form of "intimacy at a distance." As such, the viewer comes to sympathize with the character's experience or dilemma, and perhaps even feel complicit in and accepting of the action being related. Yet "para­ social interaction" is a one-way process where the viewer is free from reciprocal obligations and therefore does not have to befriend the character or do anything to alleviate their situation. Reading between the lines, picking up on what is not said, the viewer can even take a patronizing,  omnipotent  position-seeing or knowing more than the main character themselves.

     This raises the question of whether Talking Heads is an enhancing or pessimistic view of the human condition. On the one hand, John Pym has argued that Talking Heads is characterized by "unrelieved melancholy," and that most of the characters in the first series are self-deluders. Indeed, it could be argued that this is never more cruelly demonstrated than by Julie Walter’s character in "Her Big Chance," a relentlessly dimwitted actress trying to take herself seriously in a cheap, schlock video. These stories might therefore depict persons felled by hubris, or suggest that people are necessarily blind to what they cannot see. that no­ one can live outside of their own context or "think outside the box."

     On the other hand, Bennett's accounts are often described as warm. wry, or affectionate, and Albert Hunt suggests that the behavior of the alcoholic protagonist in "Bed Among the Lentils" provides a "blueprint for survival." So too it could be argued that all the characters in these tables are trying to make do in a difficult world. and that survival is, ultimately, honorable. In any event, Bennett's rich and multi-layered scripts, and his actors' compelling performances, provide nothing less than mature, sophisticated and often moving drama.