RADAR shortlists top tv shows

As the shortlists for RADAR's annual People of the Year Human Rights Awards are published, Cathy Reay checks out the runners and riders in the media categories
 
The media nominations for the biggest disability-related annual awards ceremony suggest that this has been a pretty good year for putting disability on the public radar.

Every year the Royal Association for Disability Rights (RADAR) champions the cream of the crop in factual and fictional TV representation of disability in its People of the Year awards.

Last year’s winners were Eastenders, for its array of disabled characters and strong storyline related to mental health issues, and BBC documentary Otto: Love, Lust and Las Vegas, which followed a young man with Down’s Syndrome as he fell in love.

This year, the bar has arguably been raised higher with fantastic productions that brought disability directly into the mainstream while exposing the talents of genuinely disabled actors and personalities.

Fiction nominees included Channel 4’s Cast Offs which united high profile non-disabled and disabled writing talent in an incredible story that utilised a disabled cast to portray problems of identity, loneliness and insecurity in a way that involved and touched a huge audience, disabled and not.

Meanwhile, BBC1 primetime drama The Silence recently launched young deaf actress Genevieve Barr’s career as she played a girl who had to deal with the disablist prejudices expressed about her reliability as a witness to a murder.

The factual nominations feature Inside Incredible Athletes, a sports documentary which kicked off Channel 4’s huge Paralympics push, profiling hopeful athletes training to compete in the 2012 Paralympics.

It received great acclaim and was touted as a very involving way of raising the importance and significance of disability sports.

How to Look Good Naked …with a Difference showed celebrity fashion designer Gok Wan encouraging insecure disabled women, including Disability Now cover star Shannon Murray (September 2010 issue), although the show was criticised by many viewers for its “special” status, as many people were baffled as to why the women needed their own show.

Also on the shortlist, is BBC Two’s Can Gerry Robinson Fix Dementia Care Homes?

While investigative and interesting, it was also a hugely negative story, which in turn was quite depressing and aligned with the medical model of disability. Though it was an important issue, it segregated disability from “the norm” and suggested it was something more special.

Whether or not these two programmes should have been included in the list, some people feel that there’s one glaring omission from the factual category.

BBC Two documentary Are You Having A Laugh? achieved viewing figures of 1.27 million when it aired last June. It sparked a huge online debate and received recognition for being one of a very small number of programmes that promoted the social model without patronising it.

Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson, chair of this year’s People Of The Year judging panel (which also includes Disability Now Editor Ian Macrae), said: “RADAR’s POTY awards have a massively important role in contributing to the understanding of disability and spreading positive messages about what can be achieved.

“Still so much in the media is about the negative connotations of disability and I believe the awards can help change attitudes but also more importantly reward success.”

The media and other RADAR People of the Year Human Rights Awards will be presented at a ceremony in London on 29 November.

RADAR’s People of the Year Awards broadcast nominations list

Factual
• Billboard Kids – BBC Children’s Factual
• Can Gerry Robinson Fix Dementia Care Homes? – BBC Two
• How to Look Good Naked …with a Difference – Channel 4
• Inside Incredible Athletes – Channel 4
• Panorama: Why Do You Hate Me? – BBC One Wales
• Shaking Hands With Death: Sir Terry Pratchett – BBC One
• Small Teen Big World – BBC Three

Fictional
• Cast Offs – Channel 4
• The Silence – BBC One
• The Street – BBC One

To see the full list of nominees in each category visit radar.org.uk