Then Barbara Met Alan
Who you don’t see in TV dramas very often is people with disabilities. Who you see on TV dramas even less is people with disabilities fighting for their rights, falling in love and having sex. The sex bit shouldn’t seem that significant, but it surely is because it’s so rare. So, when comedian and activist Barbara Lisicki, superbly played by Ruth Madeley of Years And Years fame, gets intimate with her lover, musician Alan Holdsworth (Arthur Hughes), in a crucial scene, it feels revolutionary. Written by Jack Thorne (Help), alongside actor-turnedwriter Genevieve Barr (The Silence), the one-off film dramatises the true story of how these two brilliantly uncompromising people fell in love in the early ’90s and egged each other on to campaign for human rights for their fellow disabled, deaf and neurodivergent people. This was an era before even ramps on buses, when just getting a table in a café was a major achievement. The initial focus for their activism was an annual ITV Telethon, and the show weaves in amazing real footage of how the campaigners managed to storm the set of the charity show, leaving host Michael Aspel looking scared. The character of Barbara, often speaking direct to camera, explains how those charity TV shows depicted disabled people as victims. She and her movement were fighting for dignity, self-respect and humanity. Rights not charity. With a funny, anarchic tone reflecting the taking-no-shit activism of its heroes, and never glossing over the reality of keeping a relationship going under the most challenging circumstances, this is the definition of required viewing.