Disability Now
– Paul Darke
February
1999 TV Review
The Christmas
period was a little weak on factual programmes about disability but the new
year saw the end of LINK (3 January) for all time. I always quite liked LINK, it never pretended to be anything
other than it was. The final
edition was a colourful retrospective that made you wish you could see the
programmes from which the clips came.
ITV, so I believe, have now commissioned
a peak viewing time thirteen part Esther Rantzen does disability slot to replace
LINK – that I want to see. ITV,
on the evening of the 3rd January, had Lost for Words,
a Deric Longden follow-up to his MS drama Wide-Eyed and Legless. This film drama
revolved around the main character’s mother having a couple of strokes.
In addition to that his wife is blind.
Lost for Words could not have been more cliched,
banal and somewhat insulting in its sentimentalisation of age and the realities
of having a stroke. Equally,
it was neither funny nor moving and even had a sighted actress badly play
the nominal role of the blind wife.
I am not an obsessive ‘all disabled roles should be played by
disabled people’ kind of critic but this was inexcusable given that
it was a superficial role and then played badly.
There was
a bizarre little interview with Ian Dury in a Sunday late night show called
The Big End (January 10) hosted by Simon Mayo.
In it a celebrity – Dury – is asked about their death and
how they view their life. The
trivialisation of life, death and the afterlife (whoever your God is) was
second to none. OZ on the other hand, Thursday’s on Channel 4, is
great gritty US TV drama from the school of Homocide and NYPD Blue. Narrated by a wheelchair using black inmate of the sterile
OZ prison it is challenging, original and full of colorful
language. Eight episodes in length,
it has nearly ended but catch it if you can.
Perfect
Babies, Tuesday’s on Channel 5, is an excellently hysterical
three part documentary series on the future of genetics. A few words from the ever cuddly and darling Tom Shakespeare
were suitably succinct and apt; the future for the disabled is looking bleaker
by the day. Perfect Babies
had a perspective that was strong, opinionated and in no doubt that in the
future difference and disability will be treated in a way that Hitler only
dreamt of. No one, after watching Perfect Babies, can
say ‘I didn’t realise’ – unlike if they watch From
The Edge (also Tuesdays), a programme that continues to go from the
surreal to the sublime.
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