Confessions, grief and a family clinging on as their life crumbles
The other night, one of those overwrought documentaries on Channel 5 with the ominous music and nightmarish news footage explored the subject of sinkholes — chasms that open up without warning to swallow homes and lives.
All the sinkholes were real. Channel 5 doesn’t do metaphors. But it’s a vivid way to describe the catastrophe that can overwhelm a family after a child is diagnosed with autism. When Peter Bowker’s drama The
A Word (BBC1) returned earlier this month, Alison and Paul hughes (Morven Christie and Lee Ingleby) seemed to be taking autistic son Joe’s antics in their stride. If he escaped their picturesque Lake District cottage, or climbed on to the school roof, they chalked it up to experience and got on with running their successful restaurant.
But even the solid foundation of their marriage no longer seems enough to withstand the sinkhole. Pieces of their lives are breaking off and tumbling into oblivion.
Daughter Rebecca’s boyfriend walked out, with only a text message for a goodbye. Alison’s stolid dad Maurice (Christopher eccleston) is reeling with grief at memories of his wife’s death from cancer.
Apparently afraid the sinkhole
SNACK OF THE NIGHT: Jo Brand was learning how to clean a moggy’s teeth on Cats And Kittens (C5), using fish-flavoured toothpaste. She took a slurp and pronounced it ‘not that bad’. Can’t see it catching on for humans, somehow.
wasn’t already deep enough, Paul started digging. he confessed to a brief urge to kiss one of his waitresses — and when that didn’t seem to bother Alison, blurted out: ‘Just for a moment, I felt more at home with Sophie than I do with you.’ And the ground opened up . . .
That’s how sinkholes work: just when you think you’re clinging on in one place, something unexpected gives way.
Despite the chaos in his characters’ lives, Bowker keeps the story under control. After an uncertain start, this series has developed powerfully. Scenes are brisk but with enough time for clever dialogue. Maurice deadpans comic lines: trying to admit romantic longings, he muttered, ‘I did feel a bit of a stirring in the glove compartment.’
There’s also room for an astonishing performance by young Max Vento as the seven-year- old Joe. he barely has a word to say but his silent, determined presence is stamped on every scene.
The climactic moment, when Joe wordlessly dragged his family into a huddle and stared at them, reassuring himself that they were all together, was genuinely moving — and a perfectly observed piece of typically autistic behaviour.
Children’s quirky behaviour was in ample evidence on
The Secret Life Of Five-Year-Olds
(C4), which introduced us to a new group of lively and confident primary school pupils as they took the measure of each other for the first time. Just as in The A Word, the girls supplied the most dominant personalities. Daisy, articulate and self-aware, declared: ‘I can be a little bit silly, but good silly.’
Wide- eyed Brooke magnified all her comments with dramatic facial expressions. She was born for the cinema, and she had a romantic streak — though when she tried to kiss her chosen boyfriend, he ran screaming.
But it was chatterbox Miylah who stole the show, first of all by championing women’s rights. She detested dolls’ houses and dressing up as a princess, she declared — rough-and-tumble was her favourite.
When she got a little too rough, and booted her best mate in the chest, he crossed her off his list of friends . . . and Miylah was distraught.
‘I don’t have a heart any more,’ she whispered. ‘It’s shrunk.’
Only a five-year-old could write lines that good.
This show is essentially the same each week, but regularly delivers these unique moments.