Ill- at- ease decade for Fry
ADECADE ago Stephen Fry made a film in which he candidly addressed the subject of his own mental illness and talked to fellow sufferers. I wouldn’t say that since then I’ve ever forgotten that this toweringly talented man lives with a major mood disorder but it has been easy to overlook it in the midst of his achievements.
TEN YEARS ON: THE NOT SO SECRET WORLD OF THE MANIC DEPRESSIVE ( BBC 2) shocked us early on with a recap of an interview Stephen conducted in Uganda in 2012. It is fair to say that Stephen and his interviewee failed to agree on the subject of homosexuality, and that their discussions were heated.
If Stephen seemed to be losing his cool, it appeared a reasonable loss of cool, and storming out of the room seemed advisable rather than rash. Last night, though, we learned that the interview had triggered a suicide attempt on Stephen’s part. It would be nice to say that this marked the beginning of Stephen’s journey to recovery but, as we realised last night, it merely opened a new chapter of his struggle.
In its way this introduction summed up one of the many hidden barbs of mental illness. If a sufferer seems to be doing all right we assume they’re better. In fact they will never be better.
Examples of the same, sad truth abounded in last night’s film, from Mr Fry, from people we’d met in the 2006 instalment, and others. Scott, a chef and family man, was weighing up the choice between losing his career and loved ones or a lifetime on strong medication.
Rachel was left paralysed after jumping from a balcony during a manic episode. She was now tackling her mental illness from a wheelchair. Cordelia, whose energy fizzed off the screen back in 2006, was still fizzing but now battling cancer as well.
Mental illness plainly doesn’t care what you already have on your plate. In between meeting all these people we saw Stephen soberly discussing the future with his psychiatrist, who put things as gently and starkly as only a doctor can. As the programme began it posed all sorts of questions. Had attitudes to mental illness improved in the past decade? Had understanding increased or the hope of a cure? The ensuing hour didn’t really answer the points but the answers were, at the same time, obvious from what was going on.
In my early teens I watched Tracey Ullman in the sketch show Three Of A Kind and, as well as nursing a strong passion for Tracey Ullman, I dreamt of having my own sketch show. Oddly, TRACEY ULLMAN’S SKETCH SHOW ( BBC1) begins with a young Tracey also dreaming of TV comedy fame. There were moments in last night’s episode when you wondered why she’d stuck to that dream.
Her lovelorn tour guide, pausing from Tudor portraits to deal with her broken heart, was distinctly, almost hauntingly sad. So, too, was the ageing daughter, dolled- up for her first night out in decades but never making it past her even older mum’s front door.
These scenes were clever, honest, humane and not funny at all. The other stuff, ( an endless Hilary Devey skit with one joke, cruel impressions of Maggie Smith and Judi Dench) seemed to circle around Ms Ullman having a pop at powerful women.
She seems powerful enough, as an actress and a writer, not to need a sketch show as a vehicle.
Especially one without laughs.