An honest and poignant portrait of a troubled genius
Any documentary made by the subject about themselves could all too easily slip into hagiography. So the fact that George Michael: (Channel 4) largely managed to avoid doing so really is quite a feat. Overseen, narrated and edited by Michael himself, who was just putting the finishing touches to it when he died on Christmas Day last year, this hour-and-a-half-long film wound up being part autobiography, part self-fashioned obituary.
As well as chronicling Michael’s journey from permatanned pin-up in Wham! to serious, Grammy Awardwinning musician, it addressed with unsuppressed honesty his personal travails, from the death (from an Aids-related illness) of his first love, Anselmo Feleppa, in 1993, through his lawsuit against his record company Sony, to his depression and struggles with fame. It was deeply affecting. Eerie, too, as we watched friends and collaborators such as Sir Elton John, Stevie Wonder and Nile Rodgers constantly refer to him in the present tense. “George is one of the kindest, most genuine people I’ve ever met in my life,” said John, while Ricky Gervais, joking about Michael’s arrest for a sexual act in a public toilet in Beverly Hills in 1998, called him his “favourite singing convict”.
Interspersed with the celebrity endorsements was footage of his live performances, including his acclaimed 1992 appearance at the Freddie Mercury tribute concert, to which Michael here lent heart-pinching pathos as he talked of being “overwhelmed by the sadness” of singing songs about a man who died from the same illness his partner would soon succumb to.
As a narrator, Michael was as you’d expect: smart, self-deprecating, with an underlying melancholy. Particularly soulful was the way in which he dissected his 1996 album Older, a breathtaking lament for Feleppa that signalled the end of a four-year hiatus brought on by grief. “Older is my greatest moment,” Michael declared.
If all this makes George Michael: Freedom sound like an unremittingly sad affair, think again: there was humour, too, with Liam Gallagher, of all people, popping up to extol the merits of Listen Without Prejudice Vol 1, Michael’s second solo studio album (“I don’t know if I bought it, stole it, or if it just, like, got delivered”). The documentary did end on a dolorous note, however, with David Austin, its co-director, adding a clip from an old MTV interview. Asked how he would like to be remembered, Michael replied: “Great songwriter... and someone who had some kind of integrity.” Neither was in doubt. Patrick Smith
Anne Robinson’s country pile was the unlikely venue for a weekend of heated debates in Abortion on Trial (BBC Two). Robinson, who it transpired had an abortion in 1968, invited eight women and one man to lounge around in her Gloucestershire home while expressing their views on the subject.
At the more extreme end of the scale was Rachel, a vehemently pro-life 47-year-old teacher – vehemently pro-life as a result of her regrets over her own two terminations. “I murdered my children” she said, although later backtracked on her use of the word “murder”.
Token man Lee also had personal reasons for his pro-life stance: his partner terminated her pregnancy against his wishes, and he was very angry. So angry, in fact, that he made one of the other participants, Mo, whose first abortion was a result of sexual abuse, storm off and quit the programme. Lee managed to rub most of his fellow weekenders up the wrong way, and was best summed up by pro-choice Carolyn: “Nice enough lad with some really c--p ideas.”
The other participants were more measured, but their views were not always clear cut. For instance, most of the pro-choice camp instinctively agreed with the concept of “abortions on demand”, until the murky issue of gender selection was raised by Kalbir, who knew a lot about the subject.
We also heard the distressing story of a woman with agoraphobia who attempted to abort her own foetus using a coat hanger because even non-surgical abortions must take place in a medical environment. This was something Robinson felt particularly passionate about, believing that legislation drawn up 50 years ago, before non-surgical abortions existed, was in serious need of an update.
Ultimately, abortion wasn’t really “on trial” here; this lot were too immersed in their own experiences to be considered impartial judges. However, if Robinson was aiming to get them – and, in turn, viewers – to look beyond their own experiences and consider the wider issues, she succeeded. Isabel Mohan