There is a scene in We Might Regret This that made me truly laugh, but not because it was funny. The BBC comedy follows Freya, a young woman who uses a wheelchair, played by Kyla Harris, who also co-created the series. We see her move in with her much older boyfriend, Abe, and, frustrated with patronising and restrictive agency staff, hire her friend Jo (Elena Saurel) to be her carer. Many moments – hilarious, sad, heartwarming – follow, but in this particular scene Freya and Jo are forced by an out-of-order disabled loo to find an alley in which to empty Freya’s bladder with a catheter and a pee bottle.
What made me laugh was not the obvious joke in the scene (which involves Jo being covered in urine) but the look the two women exchange as they go about their business. In a split second, it conveys so many thoughts, from “I’m livid we’re doing this in an alley” to “Now is not the time to laugh” to “For fuck’s sake”. And it made me laugh because I know it so well, that look; it is something only two people bonded by the carer relationship could ever give each other. I laughed in recognition but also in surprise: having relied on care my whole life, this is the first time I have seen it truthfully portrayed on screen.
This might well be because Harris co-created the show with Lee Getty who, among other things, used to be Harris’s carer – or what is known as a personal assistant (PA). “It’s very loosely based on our friendship and working relationship,” says Harris. “We knew it was a unique perspective which was very fertile ground for comedy.”
That truthfulness strikes me over and over throughout the show, specifically in its depiction of Freya’s friendship with Jo but also her relationship with Abe, and the ways other people in her life react to her. It’s often the smallest moments that feel the most gut-wrenchingly accurate. When she is stared at by a group of young people on the street, it is Abe, not Freya, who reacts with anger and incredulity, and then can’t understand why she’s annoyed that he did. It’s a scenario disabled people like me know all too well, and it is painful and cathartic to see it represented in all its fullness. Authenticity suffuses the show, meaning every shade of the disabled experience is represented – pain and joy, light and dark.
The comedy is balanced by a deep sense of intimacy, reflected in its candid depiction of care but also in the way it lets us into the very different intimate relationships in Freya’s life. “We wanted storytelling that’s rooted in these private moments, because for someone who is disabled those moments become public,” says Harris. “You know, Lee and I have known each other for over 20 years. And sometimes, we would almost take a step back when we’d have an unusual experience and think: ‘Nobody knows about this.’ Nobody but the people experiencing it know about this.”
We meet Freya when she is using a manual wheelchair and completely reliant on others to push her around. Halfway through the series, there’s a turning point: Abe comes home with a powerchair for her. Before long, Freya and Jo are up and chasing each other around the house – Jo prancing about while Freya does doughnuts in the living room. But then Freya catches sight of herself in a mirror and her face falls. She demands that Jo get her out of the chair. A non-disabled viewer may think Freya feels sad that she is becoming more disabled, but the writing and acting are accurate enough that, as a disabled person, I could see the mirror was representing society, and how it looks down on powerchair users even more than it does manual chair users. Freya was simply reacting to the comments she knew would come her way.
By the end of the episode, though, a heartwarming conversation with a man who has come to make adaptations to the house helps Freya change her mind about the chair. He helps her into it and suddenly she is out on the road, motorcycles around her, horns honking, alone beyond her house for the first time in 15 years. A smile dances on her lips. The whole scene thrums with release, joy, excitement. It’s Harris’s favourite scene because it subverts tired, false narratives around disability without anyone saying a word.
“So many people see a wheelchair and they have such negative connotations or assumptions,” Harris says. “But for a lot of wheelchair users, their mobility devices are sources of freedom and power and autonomy. And the only difference between a motorcycle and a wheelchair is the judgment we place on wheelchairs versus the non-judgment we have of motorcycles. The whole scene is about comparing a wheelchair to a device of freedom.” Only a wheelchair user could write it in a way that feels so viscerally true.
Something else the show throws itself into is tackling the taboos around care. It’s not afraid to set scenes on the toilet or in the shower. At one point it depicts a faeces-related mishap.
“The physical aspect of the intimacy of care was actually really fun to shoot,” says Saurel, who did not have any knowledge of what PAs do before taking on the role. “I felt really grateful to be let into that world. The almost symbiotic relationship Kyla and, obviously, Freya have with their PAs, it’s so intimate. It’s like a well-choreographed dance. But it shows that it’s a two-way thing. You both rely on each other to make it work. It’s so lovely to allow someone into your life that way, and it’s lovely to have the access to be part of someone’s life that way.”
Her words are echoed by Getty, who wrote much of Jo’s role based on personal experience. “People are often afraid of becoming disabled. I think part of that fear is of having to rely on somebody. And if there’s anything I’ve taken away from my experience of being a personal care assistant to Kyla and a few others, it’s that that relationship creates an expansion of love and vulnerability and intimacy that you almost can’t fathom, having not experienced it.”
As a result, the show really captures the unique dynamic between a disabled person and their PA – the joy of caring and being cared for. “Yeah, it’s difficult sometimes and it can be complicated,” says Getty. “But at the same time, it’s honestly a privilege to support somebody to experience autonomy. And it’s a privilege to just take care of each other.”
It is not the only way the show tackles intimacy head-on. There is also quite a lot of sex. Indeed, the first scene is a no-holds-barred disabled sex scene. Harris says the choice of opener was intentional. “Where I grew up, it was really common for people on the street to come up to me and say: ‘What’s wrong with you?’ And then when they got Lee on her own, they’d ask: ‘Can she have sex?’ And those were like the two first questions that people ask about being disabled. And the answer is obviously, yes. And I think everyone can have sex, in a multitude of different ways,” she says emphatically.
There is a clever mirroring of Freya and Abe’s romantic and sexual relationship with one Jo develops with Levi, Abe’s son. Although Jo and Levi’s relationship is, understandably, the source of a lot of family drama, it also serves as a useful reminder that non-disabled people’s relationships can be just as messy and complicated. Disability isn’t the problem, the oddities of human nature are –something the show makes clear in a really refreshing way.
It’s rare to see disabled sex on screen, even more so when it involves a character who also has care needs. The show doesn’t shy away from the moments when those two essential aspects of Freya’s life come up against each other. That first steamy sex scene is rudely interrupted by the terrible PA Freya has before hiring Jo, who comes into the bedroom without knocking. But the joke is on the PA, not Freya – and it’s not the end of Freya and Abe’s sex lives. Instead, we see Freya learn how to navigate needing professional care while being in a serious romantic relationship, and we see that being disabled doesn’t equate to being undesirable or undesiring. “That myth around disabled people not being sexual … it’s such a tired old trope that I’m frankly bored with. We want to shake that up.” And the show does that – it’s not just sexual but actually sexy.
Authentic, funny, sexy. These are not words I often use for media portrayals of disability. Because representations of disabled people, especially those who need care, remain so rare, television such as this does inevitably become a teaching opportunity, and often ceases to become enjoyable. We Might Regret This manages the best of both worlds: it is so entertaining you forget you’re being taught something along the way. Harris sums it up best: “I don’t believe that normal is a thing. But at the same time, normalising these experiences is really important. And you know, disability is just a natural part of existing. Being disabled is almost the most human experience that you can have.”
We Might Regret This will air on BBC Two in August.
