A long stay in Clichéland

TV’s latest drama and Julie Walters vehicle on assisted suicide means that this time it’s personal for Penny Pepper

There’s been a glut of material about assisted suicide lately, including Liz Carr’s run in with Noel Martin, who plans to commit suicide when he’s 50 this year. The implicit message is there. Impairment equals uselessness, uselessness is terminal, especially when disabled people happily feed into it.

For the opening credits of this BBC One drama, there’s pity-inducing music, man in wheelchair, eyes sad.

This is Dr Anne Turner’s husband. He dies after the first five minutes. When Anne gets progressive supranuclear palsy, we’re on the roller coaster, or should I say, rapid flight path towards famous Swiss clinic, Dignitas.

This is clearly the medicalised route to chosen death. The clichés of tests, reaffirming this is a doctor in a doctor’s world. A predictable portrayal of a non-disabled person going through the “worst nightmare”. Clare, the best friend, is the only dissenting voice, and she is given about a minute to oppose Anne’s suicide.

As Anne writes the letter to Dignitas, she details that she needs help dressing, she has no power in her legs, she’s prone to irrational behaviour.

Clearly, that’s a lot of us ready for the extermination list. I am alarmed that even at the end, Anne Turner appears to have more movement in her body than I’ve had in my living memory which has a sobering implication.

It is discomforting to know that this drama is a story based on a real person, with a family who are no doubt still coming to terms with the pain caused by this situation. I want to respect this. Yet I am, as always, most troubled by the central point to this issue, which is there are no visible and equivalent stories, no opposites to counter-balance these dramas and debates. There is something deeply disquieting in how this piece highlights that society slyly and increasingly appears to value and encourage suicide in those with impairments above the desire in many to simply thrive happily, in defiance of all challenges.

I have no pro-life fundamentalism. I actually believe as individuals we all have a right to die when we choose (preferably quietly, with privacy) but I do not and never will support the idea that suicide is an automatic response to impairment of any kind, which is the implicit and frightening message in this drama.