The A Word
BBC ONE, 9.00PM
A quiet hit last year, Peter Bowker’s heartbreakingly lovely Lake District drama about a couple, Alison (Morven Christie) and Paul Hughes (Lee Ingleby), struggling to do their best for their young autistic son Joe (the outstanding Max Vento) returns for a second series.
Two years on, musicloving Joe is seven, still wearing his headphones and finding comfort from a challenging world in an endless catalogue of Indie hits from the Eighties and Nineties. When he takes to the school roof one day, causing a panic, Alison and Paul realise for the first time that Joe is becoming aware that he is different from the other children around him, and they find it hard to admit even to themselves that they might be in need of specialist help.
As ever, there’s no shortage of people willing to offer an opinion, notably Joe’s obstreperous grandfather Maurice (Christopher Eccleston). But that is the joy of a series set in the realistic context of an extended family in which everyone has their own troubles to deal with. There’s plenty of humour to balance it all out, too, when the former in-laws of Alison’s brother Eddie (Greg Mchugh) turn up on the doorstep with a major announcement. Gerard O’donovan