Other series and dramas

Apart from TV 'soaps', a few other series have featured people with disabilities:

• Ironside (NBC, 1967, USA), the wheelchair-using detective, first came onto UKTV screens in the 1970s and has been frequently repeated.
• The Head of the Emergency Room in ER (1994, Warner Bros. for NBC, USA) uses a crutch, without comment except in one episode.
• Actress Julie Fernandez (see Eldorado, above) also appeared in the second series of The Office (2003, BBC2).
• There have been some very effective dramas which have included disabled people realistically, and given the viewer some understanding of disabled people's lives (available from the bfi archive), eg:
• Walter (Stephen Frears, Central Independent Television for ITV, 1982), about a man with learning difficulty, played by Ian McKellen, who is committed to an institution after his mother dies.
• Raspberry Ripple (Nigel Finch, UK/USA, BBC1, 1988), about a production of Guys 'n' Dolls in a home for wheelchair users; a member of the cast uses this as the front for a robbery.
• Deptford Graffitti (Phillip Davis, Positive Partnership for Channel 4, 1991), about a man with brittle bones in a home for 'incurables', who escapes with some bikers. His artistic talents help them with their graffiti and, en route, he gets to make love to a woman.
• Skallagrigg (1994, Richard Spence, UK), about institutionalisation of disabled people, and some young disabled people's discoveries about the brutality of the past.
• Wide Eyed and Legless (1994, Richard Loncraine, BBC). A woman with a degenerative condition chooses her husband a replacement woman, a blind novelist. Humour prevents the play descending into sentimentality, but the scene of the marriage of the sick woman's daughter, where the woman insists on not using a wheelchair, is painful to watch as it is both true-to-life and shows the public's fear of this useful mobility aid.
• Our Friends in the North (Channel, 1995). The brother of one of the main characters is played by a disabled actor.
• The Unknown Soldier (three-part drama, Carlton Television for ITV, 1998). Three of the extras in the home for disabled veteran servicemen after World War 1 are played by disabled actors.
• Flesh and Blood (2002, Derek Wax, BBC2) is about a man who slowly discovers he was adopted, and that both his real parents had learning difficulties and are still living. It deals with how he grapples with the issues this throws up for his wife and himself.

• The Egg is about a man with cerebral palsy, who enters a café at 4am and is misunderstood and patronised by the waitress, until he shows that he can help her and the chef with their emotional problems. This film features on the bfi Disabling imagery? DVD (2002), available from bfi education.
• One episode of A Touch of Frost (1992-2000, ITV) included two young people with Down's Syndrome.

Every Time You Look At Me

 

This excellent BBC film for TV is shot sensitively and sympathetically, against a backdrop of London's Canary Wharf. It tells the story of Chris (Mat Fraser, a Thalidomide-impaired person with very short arms), who is a secondary teacher and would be Deputy Head, and how he meets Nicky (Lisa Hammond), an extrovert short person. Chris goes out with his estate agent brother Steve (Stuart Laing) to a dance club, where he sees Nicky dancing with a black girl, Jen (Georgina Ackerman), who works with Steve. As Jen and Steve's relationship develops, leading eventually to marriage, Chris's existing relationship with Michelle falls apart. Chris has been living with Michelle (Lorraine Pillington) for seven years but begins to feel there isn't anything real about their relationship. On Chris's second accidental meeting with Nicky, she challenges his attitude to her as a disabled person and ends up inviting him round to her house when her parents are out. Nicky is 25, works at a hairdresser's and hasn't yet had sex. Chris obliges, saying it's a one night stand.

However, Chris is drawn to seeing Nicky again. Nicky's outgoing, in-your-face attitude to her impairment both challenges and attracts Chris, who has tried to overcome his impairment without, in some ways, accepting it. One particularly strong scene shows Nicky and Chris going into a pub covered in St. George's flags and full of hostile, bigoted, beer-swilling, middle-aged 'skinheads'. Nicky faces them down, but Chris says it was 'too real' for him. Chris leaves Michelle and starts a serious relationship with Nicky. However, Nicky's mum (Lindsey Calson) frightens Chris off by telling him about the degenerative nature of Nicky's condition, and how much pain she's in - all of which she has hidden from Chris. But, eventually, Chris and Nicky do get together.

The barriers disabled people face are woven into the film in a humorous way - negative attitudes, stares, doors that cannot be opened, lift buttons that are too high up, parental expectations.

This is a profoundly positive film about disability. It owes much to disabled Producer, Ewen Marshall, and the two disabled lead actors, all of whom are veterans of the Disability Arts Movement. It will appeal to teenagers and raises many issues to discuss. Most of all, it supports the 'social model', showing that barriers are the problem, and that difference is ordinary