A bitter pill to swallow

TRENDS and fads are a part of daily existence. Unfortunately, they’re not confined to the food we eat or the clothes we wear. BEING BIPOLAR ( C4) was an intelligent, thoughtful film presented by psychotherapist Philippa Perry, who questioned some of the current fads in the treatment of mental health.

In the 1940s, when psychiatry was young, devotees of the “talking cure” thought serious, delusional illnesses could be treated with one- on- one therapy. In time, it was realised that was not the case.

Science taught that mental illnesses were all down to the chemistry of the brain and could be managed or even cured with drugs. A few cautious voices are starting to ask whether that’s right, though. And Perry’s film took this radical idea to three people who had been diagnosed bipolar.

Her point was strongest in the case of 54- year- old Paul, whom we met in the throes of a manic episode. An NHS psychiatrist might have said that there was no meaning in Paul’s ravings and grand plans. They were just products of a brain that needed pills.

As Perry probed into his life and circumstances, she realised there was a strong link between his wild fantasies and the way his personality had been shaped. The only child of two loving but success- fixated parents, Paul had gone on to achieve a great deal as a businessman.

There was no room in his vocabulary or mental make- up for being second- best. When he failed, or whenever he didn’t win first prize, he retreated into a delusional world where he was semi- divine and had limitless powers.

Paul certainly seemed pleased to have been led to this connection. Whether it actually freed him from the debilitating cycle of mania and depression was less easy to see.

Then again, Perry, unlike many a telly expert, wasn’t suffering delusions of grandeur. She was simply wondering whether mental illness might have causes other than chemical and treatments other than pills. Sadly, in today’s blinkered world, that sort of thinking can get you sectioned.

Grumpy, lonely cop with unattainable love interest. Imposing backdrops and knotty, brain- teasing mysteries. You’d never call DCI BANKS ( ITV) ground- breaking stuff. But last night’s episode gave us a shock.

It was Alan Banks’s birthday and he spent it in the pub with some fellow officers and his mum and dad.

The next morning he got up with a slight hangover and was about to get in his car when his phone rang. The body of a woman had been found, half- buried, no identification except for a solitary, unusual tattoo.

It was the first time in at least a decade that I’ve seen a TV cop get to the end of a night out. The accepted tradition is that the phone rings, and they leave the pint, the plate of spaghetti, the disappointed spouse for a lonely patch of moorland and an eviscerated corpse.

This beginning, humdrum in its way, set the tone for an episode not so much different but quietly going its own way. Instead of clouds scudding across big skies and stone- faced sleuths shot from the boots upwards, this was really a British TV detective mystery trying to be just that.

With its landscape of beauty parlours and Travelodges it felt very home- grown, or at least not pretending to be all moody and Scandinavian.

Sometimes a show hits the heights by aiming low.