e reflects the hospital, as a bizarre environment. From the first episode, Marlowe begins to twist the seemingly ordinary characters of the hospital within his real, and hallucinatory webs, and through experiencing Phillip Marlowe's dreams and hallucinations, it is not long before the audience begins to question what is real, and which character belongs to which story. For even the real seems obscure. The 1945 thriller scenes of The Singing Detective are pure film noir, a world of suspicion and paranoia where nothing is as it seems.
             As if part of a theatrical setting, the characters come to life, both in reality and in Marlowe's illusion. The characters literally dance in Marlowe's illusions, and it is here that the audience begins to see the mechanics of Marlowe's brain, and understand how Marlowe could be a writer. Although Marlowe's paranoid delusions are a result of his psoriatic anthropy, writers, whether they are placed in a similar situation to Marlowe or not, tend to utilise the Marlowe's concept of imagination in order to create a story.
             In these hallucinations and illusions, the characters dance and sing as if they are merely toys. Although the characters are physically there, Marlowe manipulates them in his mind as if they are puppets, and the "puppets" are doing things they wouldn't ordinarily do, such as the religious evangelists. While they are imagined to be dancing in a cheery and patronising way, and are singing along the lines of something they would preach, ie, "bring gloom down to the minimum", these actions seem out of character, and there is some sense of irony played about here.
             The illusions also ask the question, is Marlowe going mad?, just as is ex-wife seems to ponder. This is a vulnerable situation that many people would try to avoid, although Marlowe does not make too much effort to prove otherwise. He is not too proud to plead to the doctors about his health, mental and physical, and a...