Warwick Davis masters more than Bear’s gung-ho theatrics
Warwick Davis, the actor born with a rare form of dwarfism, has many likeable qualities. He is funny, sharp and pragmatic about the condition which has impacted considerably on his life. So I wondered whether he really deserved Bear’s Mission with Warwick Davis (ITV), a piece of TV torture in which “survivalist” Bear Grylls took him through the wilder bits of the Lake District.
“He’s overcome some massive obstacles in life, but can he survive the Lake District with me?” asked Grylls with his usual amount of boy-scout heartiness.
More importantly, I wondered, could Grylls survive the Lake District with Warwick Davis? Had I been the Star Wars actor I would have run amok with my pen knife every time he tried to proffer me a smidgen of glutinous fish eyeball.
There was something ever-soslightly patronising about Grylls’s treatment of his charge, although Davis seemed to take it with good humour. “He may be short in stature, but trust me the man is mighty in spirit,” gushed Grylls as he took Davis through a fairly horrendous amount of climbing, abseiling and death sliding – all of which, of course, posed fairly serious problems. The camera tended to linger rather too long on Davis’s struggles, or indeed on his stature (the opening shot showed him opening a map which was double his size).
Grylls, meanwhile, made everything look terribly easy, although he admitted that he often emitted the “smallest trickle of wee” when tackling the dreaded death slide. That’s probably as close to a dark night of the soul as Edward “Bear” ever gets.
Davis was resilient, undaunted, brilliantly aware of how to play to the camera. “I feel like a hobbit actually,” he said, as he stood on a rock with a fishing rod in his hand. He also managed to complete all the challenges thrown at him.
“You love smashing stereotypes, don’t you?” said Grylls, although I am not quite sure what constitutes a stereotypical dwarf.
Bear’s Mission with Warwick Davis was a piece of filler TV which did no one involved any real favours. There could have been something strangely touching about this odd couple’s Cumbrian odyssey had there been more chat and less gung-ho theatrics – as it was, I felt they really never got to know each other.
The latest Horizon, subtitled Teenagers vs Cancer: a User’s Guide (BBC Two), made a determined effort not to wallow in sadness. I thought, initially, that narrator Jack Whitehall was trying too hard to be chipper: “Being a teenager can be pretty rubbish. So imagine what it’s like to throw cancer in the mix.” But then I remembered being chastised by a friend who had breast cancer for doing my “sympathetic face”, which I think involved me thinning my lips into the smile of a simpleton. No one wants that, and this documentary showed how patients refused to be mollycoddled or pitied.
Chloe Thurlow, from Bristol, had been diagnosed with lymphoma but embraced the indignities which the disease had thrust upon her. “I look like a little golden kiwi fruit,” she said as she tried on a new wig. This remark seems throwaway but I think it was important, if you think how self image is a constant cause of anxiety for most teenagers. As Roger Daltrey, frontman of The Who and a patron of the Royal Marsden Hospital in London, said: “That’s a time when a spot on your nose is a big deal.”
Matt defied his aggressive form of leukaemia by having an ironic tattoo of the grim reaper on his leg. Nick, who also had leukaemia and had been plagued by feelings of isolation, took part in an event for fellow sufferers called Find Your Sense of Tumour. Optimism and laughter abounded.
Many stories were unspeakably sad. Chloe Drury died after developing a rare and fast-moving form of bone cancer. Her family’s lives had to be radically recalibrated when she became ill and there was a defiance in their refusal to return to normal. When she died, her mother campaigned tirelessly to try to lower the age at which someone can take part in a drugs trial. Currently, there is a shortage of early-stage clinical trials testing new cancer drugs in children, thus impeding any efforts to improve survival rates from paediatric cancers. In a documentary that strove hard to be cheerful, it was this important point which resonated the most.
Bear’s Mission with Warwick Davis
Horizon: Teenagers vs Cancer: a User’s Guide★★★