In an early-1980s Time review of a book by Andrew Greeley, the author called his novel Thy Brother's Wife a "...putrid, puerile, prurient, pulpy potboiler".
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In an interview with Publishers Weekly, writer David Schow described potboilers as fiction that "...stacks bricks of plot into a nice, neat line".
She was unfailingly critical of the great Czech conductor Rafael Kubelík, described Janáček's orchestral work Taras Bulba as "trash" and even called Bartók's classic Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta a "potboiler".
His 1954 film noir triller Loophole is a fast-paced, well-acted drama about a bank teller framed for a $50,000 embezzlement and his efforts to clear his name, and his 1957 Dragoon Wells Massacre is, despite its potboiler title, an actionful, tightly made western with some surprising plot twists in which many of the characters aren't quite what they seem to be.
Comics writer-artist Michael T. Gilbert wrote in liner notes for 2006 reprinting in The Comics Journal that it "reads like a B-movie potboiler, bubbling over with greed, sex, and political corruption".
In an interview with Yahoo TV show runner/executive producer Warren Leight noted, "This episode is a real potboiler that involves a lot of politics, and in politics, you never know who to trust."
Thin Man films shares its offices in London's Greek Street with Potboiler Production, a production company started by Simon Channing Williams and producer Gail Egan in 2000, which produced seven films before Channing Williams died, among them Douglas McGrath's Nicholas Nickleby and Fernando Meirelles' Oscar-winning The Constant Gardener.