Blade on the Feather is a television drama by Dennis Potter, broadcast by ITV on 19 October 1980 as the first in a loosely connected trilogy of plays exploring language and betrayal.

A pastiche of the John Le Carré spy thriller and transmitted eleven months after Anthony Blunt was exposed as the 'fourth man', the drama combines two of Potter's major themes: the visitation motif and political disillusionment.

Cavendish leads Daniel to a summer house at the bottom of the garden where the author reveals he has been writing his memoirs, implicating himself and Mr Hill, as well as several high-profile MPs, as Soviet sympathizers.

Daniel convinces Cavendish to surrender the papers and shoot himself; the old man obliges, having grown weary of the enforced secrecy of his final years.

In the event, budget cuts and scheduling problems meant that only three plays were produced: Blade on the Feather, Rain on the Roof and Cream in My Coffee.

Cavendish reveals to Daniel that he was drawn to the communist fervor at Cambridge in the 1930s as a means of escaping the rigidities of his traditional upper-class English background, only to find himself tarnished by his association with Sovietism.

The visitation motif plays a central role in The Confidence Course (1965), Shaggy Dog (1968), Angels Are So Few (1970), Joe's Ark (1974), Schmoedipus (1975), Brimstone and Treacle (1976), Rain on the Roof (1980), Track 29 (1987) and Secret Friends (1992).

Daniel's anecdote about the Pakistani waiter sweeping up in a fast food restaurant and the outraged response this provokes from a disgruntled diner is taken from Joe's Ark, in which Dennis Waterman's character reacts in the same way after receiving news of his sister's terminal illness.