Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Hope and prayers
INVENTING THE IMPOSSIBLE: THE BIG LIFE FIX
BBC2, 8pm
POLLYANNA Hope is desperate to be a ballet dancer when she grows up. But the 12-year-old lost her leg in a horrific accident when she was just two and struggles with certain moves.
“In my ballet exam I got marks off because I didn’t point my foot,” she says. “It’s quite difficult to point your foot when you don’t have one.”
Pollyanna has since given up doing exams, but footage of her pirouetting across a studio on her prosthetic blade demonstrates her determination.
Enter the inventors and engineers of The Big Life Fix. This hugely emotional series sees teams of super clever scientists come up with ways to change the lives of those who face day-to-day difficulties. Yusuf
Mohammed is the inventor taking on the challenge of building Pollyanna a prosthetic leg that will enable her to go up on her tip-toes.
“If she wants to be a dancer when she grows up, she will be,” says mum Sarah Hope, who won a Daily Mirror Pride of Britain award last year for her campaigning and charity work around prosthetics and child amputees.
Viewers were in tears to hear how Pollyanna had been waiting at a bus stop with Sarah and grandmother Elizabeth in 2007, when a bus careered into them killing Elizabeth and seriously injuring her and Sarah. Will Yusuf be the answer to their prayers?
Elsewhere, materials expert Zoe helps a man who was paralysed in a car accident to bake a cake with his three-year-old daughter.