Better Off Dead? (BBC One) | iPlayer
Bridgerton (Netflix)
The Gathering (Channel 4) | channel4.com
The Big Cigar (Apple TV+)
Every so often, a documentary comes along that unnerves you so much you half-wish you hadn’t seen it. Better Off Dead? (BBC One) is one such programme. Presented by Silent Witness actor and disability activist Liz Carr, who’s had arthrogryposis – congenital joint contracture – since childhood, it delivers a passionate and coherent argument against assisted dying. An emotionally bruising slab of television, it’s about life and death itself.
For Carr, assisted dying is a misnomer. She terms it “assisted suicide” and wants it to remain a criminal offence in the UK. “If you think this is about terminal illness, think again. This is about disability, and for me and others that is terrifying.”
Carr talks to some disabled people, including fellow activists and friends, who have experience of the able-bodied saying they couldn’t cope with disability and would rather be dead. She also debates with people who support assisted dying, among them Lord Falconer and Times columnist Melanie Reid, who is tetraplegic and who expresses concerns about anti-assisted dying activists, such as Carr, dictating what’s permitted for the general population.
For the pro-lobby, the need for “control” pops up in their assisted dying arguments repeatedly, like a grimly persuasive jack-in-the -box (fair enough: who doesn’t want autonomy over their death?). However, Carr fears that such legislation introduced in the UK wouldn’t stop at assisting the terminally ill.
To illustrate this, she visits Canada, where euthanasia was legalised in 2016 under the Maid (Medical Assistance in Dying) scheme. This is the most startling section of the programme: the country is deemed a progressive nirvana, but legislation originally reserved for the terminally ill nearing death has changed. There’s now an option for people with non-terminal conditions causing them “unbearable suffering”, which includes the usual safeguards and a 90-day reflection period (terminally ill patients can be euthanised within 24 hours).
With Maid euthanasia numbers rising fast (the documentary quotes 1,000 in the first year and more than 13,000 six years later), Carr presents horror stories from the scheme. One man with minor disabilities who feared homelessness was accepted on to the scheme (he withdrew after being helped by a fundraiser); a nightmarishly chirpy automated 24-hour Maid hotline is straight out of Black Mirror.
Carr visits a Canadian doctor, herself in a wheelchair, who has euthanised hundreds of people. Without wishing to cast aspersions, the doctor has an off-putting, uber-jolly demeanour (she loves her job because patients are so “grateful”). We’re told that some people choose to expire on a beaten-up black recliner in her office. It resembles a massage chair – the kind you might get plonked in at the wash basin at the hairdresser. Carr stares at it in horror, and frankly so do I.
Better Off Dead? isn’t perfect: it’s mulishly partisan (why not interview someone with terminal illness?), but it dares to ask probing questions. How secure are proposed safeguards? Is this really where we want the UK to end up?
I couldn’t suppress a flutter of excitement about the return of Bridgerton (Netflix), based on Julia Quinn’s Regency-era novels, for an eight-part third series, even though series two was about as thrilling as watching a soggy petticoat being tumble-dried. The first four-episode drop obliges, with plenty of Bridgerton’s famed National Trust sensory porn: carriages; gowns; debutante balls; reorchestrated pop (Billie Eilish; Sia); the deranged wigs of Queen Charlotte (including what resembles a cotton wool ball mountain teetering on her head).
This time, the romantic focus is on Penelope Featherington, played nicely by Nicola Coughlan as a wallflower with spikes. Penelope is estranged from her friend, proto-feminist Eloise (Claudia Jessie), because (spoiler alert) Eloise knows Penelope is “Lady Whistledown”, who terrorises the “ton” with her gossip sheets.
Elsewhere, it’s the usual Bridgerton-mix of aristo-totty, financial woes and new suitors. Having learned from the sex-rationing mistakes of series two, this series has buffed up Penelope’s secret crush, Colin (Luke Newton), honing his pecs, hosing him with fake tan, pushing him into threesomes and fluffing up his sideburns until he resembles a gentleman werewolf.
With Coughlan centre stage, it’s diverting and glossy enough, but also rather samey and a bit blah – even with some last-minute libidinous romping in a carriage. Is the problem with Bridgerton, or ennui with period dramas in general? Something feels seriously creaky now.
On Channel 4, novelist Helen Walsh’s new six-part, Liverpool-based thriller The Gathering occasionally comes across like a better behaved British Euphoria, or a re-spin of Skins. A girl is attacked at an illegal beach rave (each episode retraces its steps), but it’s really about moody teenagers burdened with messed-up parents. Mixed in with sex, drugs, refugees and social ills, there’s elite tumbling gymnastics and parkour/free running, where teens backflip across rooftops and off walls. All of which is guaranteed to make embittered older viewers like me feel about as lithe and limber as Methuselah.
One gymnast, Kelly (Eva Morgan), has a struggling bereaved single parent (Warren Brown). The other, Jess (Sadie Soverall), has a pushy, upmarket mother (Vinette Robinson in fine form as a kind of Cruella de Ville of the landing mats). But the plotting is wayward and the denouement (the whole series is available to stream) feels forced. What’s impressive is the socio-emotional interplay between the young cast, the sense of real, raw lives being lived.
The Big Cigar (Apple TV+) is a six-part bio-drama based on a Playboy article by Joshuah Bearman (who also provided the source material for Argo, the film about the 1979 Tehran hostage crisis). It tells the “mostly true” story of Black Panther party founder Huey P Newton (André Holland from Moonlight). Framed for murder, pursued by the FBI, Newton is smuggled out to Cuba by the Hollywood producers behind Easy Rider (played by Alessandro Nivola and PJ Byrne) who fake the making of a movie (The Big Cigar of the title).
Set mainly in the 1970s, The Big Cigar is constantly (wearisomely) time-hopping. Real-life figures are introduced somewhat clunkily. Still, with an opening double bill directed by Don Cheadle, it boasts modish, wraparound styling (from afros to split screens), a solid soundtrack, a firm sense of Black history (highlighting the community ventures of the Panthers) and lively dialogue (“One of you ruling-class crackers gotta know someone with a plane”). Ultimately, this “mostly true” story would have been a better fit for a film, a la BlacKkKlansman, but Holland is strong as the revolutionary political activist grappling with memories, addictions and trauma.
Star ratings (out of five)
Better Off Dead? ★★★★
Bridgerton ★★★
The Gathering ★★★
The Big Cigar ★★★
What else I’m watching
The Fortune Hotel
(ITV1)
New reality gameshow seemingly paying homage to The Traitors. Hosted by Stephen Mangan at a Caribbean hotel, it’s ludicrous and enjoyable. But, after Claudia Winkleman’s sartorial Traitors splendour, Mangan disappoints with his dad mooching on hols look.
Welcome to Wrexham
(Disney+)
Third series of Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney’s feelgood/feel-bad/feel-everything docuseries about Wrexham FC that is as much about community spirit. A fourth season has just been confirmed.
Tokyo Vice
(BBC One)
Series two return of the stylish, subtle cult Tokyo-set crime thriller. Ansel Elgort excels as a US journalist looking into organised crime.
