Disability Now – Paul Darke

October 1999 TV Review

The impairment broadcasters, as I know call BBC2 and Channel 4, now make it almost impossible to turn either station on without some lengthy tome on what a terrible life it is to be bodily different. Video Diaries: Not Stupid (BBC2, August 14) and Video Diaries: Spit It Out (BBC2, August 22) respectively explored autism and stammering in a personalised perspective but was as lacking in imagination as the newly returned From The Edge (BBC2, September 7 - every Tuesday evening for the next three months).

Omagh – the Legacy (BBC2, August 15), the main focus of which was the story of one young woman’s recovery from severe injuries, including blindness, caused by the Omagh bomb was insulting. This programme disgusted me in that it exploited the Northern Island issue, its subject and her family in a voyeuristic manner that was vacuous, artless and patronising. The young woman’s life, attitudes and dignity are so great, truly magnificent, that it makes me ashamed to have even watched this travesty of a documentary. Compared to the woman (and the other victims of the bomb shown) I am nothing and never will be; the documentary’s makers, conversely, should not be allowed to walk on the same planet as any of us.

Life Support (BBC1, August 23), a medical ethics drama series, covered the issue of requested euthanasia in relation to motor-neurone disease. The final line of the show was ‘a fair death honours the whole life’; unfortunately the show was in fact an advert for living wills and euthanasia. Hidden Love: A Love Less Ordinary (C4, August 31), a considered look at sexuality and disability, was a cracker of a documentary. Penny – a severely arthritic porn writer with a penchant for nude modelling; Mieke – a Dutch stroke victim buying sex via SAR; and Ros – an autistic object fetishist, all frankly spoke of their sex lives in an unsettlingly disarming manner that hit just the correct spot – literally sometimes.

Somewhat surreal were the two disability episodes of BBC2’s sex series Adult Lives. Welcome to Norfolk Mr Griffin (BBC2, September 7), about a white elderly woman’s romance with a visiting Afro-caribbean amputee known as ‘One Off’ (!). Followed by Permission to Love (BBC2, September 8), a look at the sex lives of people with learning difficulties. I have no idea what the point was and neither did the makers or subjects of them. Trash TV made for trashy people to watch.

The must watch TV of October, more comment next month, is Channel 4’s contribution to Deaf Awareness: The Deaf Century: The Sound of Silence (C4, October 2, 9, 16) – a comparative series which makes The Disable Century (BBC2, July DN) look like an insightful and artistic masterpiece. Its three parts looks at a century of Deafness: 1900-45 being ostracised; 1945–65 an era of conformity; and 1965 – 1999, an era in which recognition takes place of sign language but in which cochlear implants undermine the recognition. Also look out for the revealing Sound & Fury (C4, October 10) about one family’s reaction to the issue of cochlear implants.

512 Words