Disability Now – Paul Darke

July 1999 TV Review

The good, the bad and the ugly of disability imagery were plentiful on our screens in the last month. The good was a Party Political Broadcast: Socialist Labour Party (All channels, 28 May); irrespective of the politics (which are not mine) it was good to a severely disabled guy, with thalidomide, articulating coherently on serious political issues. The bad was Nightclub (BBC 2, May 24), a pathetic little series that sneered at its subjects; this particular edition followed a wheelchair user looking for romance to a club in Liverpool and was made with a patronising arrogance that demeaned the disabled man represented.

The ugly was Maise Raine (BBC 1, June 4) - a truly offensive little piece of crass, badly written and ugly television. Pauline Quirk plays a police detective and, in the first episode of the new series, a mentally ill woman comes in to the police station and pretends to be ‘deaf and dumb’. The way in which the falsely ‘deaf and dumb’ character was treated, spoken off and humiliated and used dramatically was quite simply insulting. Disability was also adequately covered in Home Ground: A Difficult Diagnosis (BBC2, June 1) and Equinox: Curse of the Phantom Limbs (C4, June 7). These were two documentaries that explored the medial professions complete lack of knowledge about disability and showed how disabled people (epileptics and amputees respectively) are exploited, betrayed and objectified by medicine.

Which brings us to the BBC’s DPU programmes The Disabled Century, a documentary series exploring individual disabled people’s lives over the past 85 years (BBC 2, May 27, June 3 & 10) and Me and My … (BBC 2, June 7 – 11). Me and My … was four individualised vignettes by disabled people looking at their aids: wheelchair, p.a., etc. Both series’ were amazing and must be praised for their bravery and truly innovative style. The Disabled Century (and Me and My … ) used, ironically, every possible cliché and stereotype available to them to articulate their obvious view that the Social Model is wrong and that the Medical Model of disability is fine as long as people are nicer to us.

Equally, any major documentary series that highlights the magnificent role model that Duggie Bader is to us all as disabled people is, in this day and age, truly innovative TV. To make programmes in the late 1990s using 1970s style and a form which included 1960’s theatrical devices such as body projection, was indeed challenging and witty – they made me laugh. And, significantly, they could only have been commissioned by a man of the bravery and talent of Ian Macrae at the Disability Programmes Unit.

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