Children are very cruel, yes. Of course. Children are extraordinarily cruel little creatures.

The serial was told using a non-linear narrative structure and as the critic Graham Fuller noted in Potter on Potter "as chamber-piece and identity quest Casanova strongly anticipates [later works such as] The Singing Detective. As well as being an intensely personal play for Potter it was his first foray in the use of popular music to heighten the dramatic tension in his work. His father Walter Edward Potter (1906 – November 1975) was a coal miner in this rural mining area between Gloucester and Wales; his mother was Margaret Constance née Wale (1910-2001).

Dennis Christopher George Potter (17 May 1935 – 7 June 1994) was an English television dramatist screenwriter and journalist. Beginning with contributions to BBC television's The Wednesday Play anthology series from 1965 he peaked with The Singing Detective (1986) a BBC TV serial for which he is best remembered. This work and many of his other widely acclaimed television dramas mixed fantasy and reality the personal and the social and often used themes and images from popular culture.