I personally love turning the television on and just seeing two Tories there, waiting for me – “This Morning is a British daytime magazine programme that is broadcast on ITV1” – so thank you Channel 4 for the addition of Prue and Danny’s Death Road Trip (Thursday 16 Feb, 9pm), which is exactly that. Just spinning the TV idea generator wheel here, hold on: Prue Leith and … her MP son … go on a road trip … about assisted dying. Yeah, that’ll do. Does anyone have two cameras and a big van?
We should start with my Prue Leith impression, which is amazing. It works better in real life but sort of translates here: “Mm, yes – well you can certainly taste the booze.” Imagine I am wearing a really fun pair of glasses. It’s good, isn’t it? And after a tough six years of just doing that over and over again on Bake Off, she’s off to Seattle, Atlanta, Vancouver and Toronto (but, crucially, not Switzerland) to chase the hottest of hot potatoes, the assisted dying debate, across the 10 US states where it is legalised but frowned upon. Mm, yes – well you can certainly taste the pentobarbs.
I have to say, Prue and Danny’s Death Road Trip, despite the clankingly inelegant title, is a fascinating documentary for two reasons. First, it truly is one of the better-framed “debates” I have seen on British TV in the last … well, how old am I, 35 years? Prue is extremely pro-dignity in dying, after watching her brother’s long, painful death despite being surrounded by palliative care: she’s been campaigning for the practice to be introduced to the UK for 12 years. Danny Kruger is very anti- (what he calls) “assisted suicide”, predominantly because he worked with a charity that helped former prisoners reform, and as a result sees it as a system open to abuse. Both lean on the centre-sides of the debate, both have varied points of view on why assisted dying is right or wrong (pain management, human empathy, the mortal fear of being a burden, religion, mental health, suffering, the effectiveness of the techniques used), and both are willing to hear each other out in various roadside diners and on the top decks of ferries. No one is ever really right and no one ever really gets it wrong. It’s a curiously engrossing watch.
If you’re not into that – I’m not, because I already have perfect politics so don’t need Danny Kruger telling me what to think from one of the safest seats in Britain – it’s purely fascinating on a human level to see Prue Leith and her son interact with about the same fondness I have for people I just met in a long queue at the airport. You realise quite early on in life that every family is different – how big their TV is, how tidy their house is, what weird things they believe are normal to put in a pasta bake – but I’ve rarely seen that represented quite so vividly on screen. To watch Danny walk into a gorgeous farmhouse kitchen, behold a plate of crumpets and say a brisk: “Hello Mum, OK, very good,” is to know once and for all that you are normal.
There are a lot of profound moments, though, thanks to the generosity of the interviewees planning an assisted death as well as the empathy of the film-making around them. We meet Jan, a retired carpenter living with advanced Parkinson’s, at his first consultation to qualify for Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) programme. As the (incredible) doctor peppers him with deliberately antagonistic questions about his life, his level of pain, and other care solutions available to him, he is calm and resolute. “I know what life should be like,” he says. “I know what I want to be.”
Later, Prue – who is 82, and talking rationally about a possible medical situation that could arise in, say, 10 years’ time – has a frank discussion with Danny about her will. “I think everyone should think about death,” she tells us, “even if it just makes them appreciate life.” With the Canadian government debating whether to open MAiD up to those suffering with long-term mental health issues such as PTSD, the documentary enters into its most divisive and sticky territory, but comes out with clean hands. It’s rare you see a hot button topic done well – normally you have to watch Jimmy Carr flamethrow a Hitler painting to get this sort of nuance – so it’s refreshing to see it here. Right, time to switch over and watch some Ant and Dec.
