Disability Now – Paul Darke

June 2000 TV Review

The best children's television at the moment Bump in the Night (BBC2, 28 April and most mornings in Holiday periods). A bad taste cartoon series of a 'thing' that eats and lives parasitically on disgusting items in a child's bedroom. It is very funny and astute in its aim to value everything as a valid part of life. It is Australian and made with a great sense of irony and humanity.

Friday nights now offers a great arena of comedy, though it is wise to steer clear of the terribly British drivel on the BBC. Take a look at Channel 4. Frasier (C4, 28 April and every Friday night) and Smack the Pony (4, 28 April and every Friday night) never fail to make me laugh out loud.

Arabian Nights (BBC1, 30/1May) was the BBC's big May bank Holiday offering. It told the stories of Arabian Nights in what seemed an eternity. Though it was not actually very long it seemed very very long. Disability played a key part. The main disability story being about a hunchback called Bac Pac, played as high camp melodrama by Alexie Sayle. I did not mind the story of Bac Pac (an allegory about taking responsibility) but I did feel that the performances were very weak and somewhat hammy.

New Labour On Trial (C4, 6 May) was a typically liberal spin on politics: avoid any real issue and reduce the complex to the simple. Jon Snow astutely managed to avoid any discussion in depth of new Labour's betrayal of disabled people since they were elected. It is always a disappointment to see how disabled people's role in society is reduced to fantasies of social inclusion when in fact the political process does little other than attempt to assimilate disabled people and eradicate difference at every turn. Only the acceptance of difference as equal in its difference leads to tolerance, assimilation will only lead to greater destruction of those who are different.

The Silver Tassie (BBC2, 7 May) was an opera by Mark-Anthony Turnage broadcast from the stage in London. Set in Dublin and exploring the return, in a wheelchair, of First World War veterans, it got a bad theatre review from DN and I felt exactly the same: it was cliched, crass, long, boring and, outrageously, probably watched by less people than go to day centres in Coventry.

Thankfully though the BBC redeemed itself with the return of Third Rock from the Sun (BBC2, 10 May, then every week for the next few months). The obese policeman Don character, the lover of the stereotypical blond bombshell, is a joy that shares my attributes of this critic. A true sense of irony being one of it main strengths. The success of American sitcoms, and the failure of UK sitcoms can be directly linked to the use of irony; US sitcoms have it and UK one's do not. British sitcoms often mistake cleverness and smugness for irony.

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