A
Song For Jenny: Sunday, BBC
One
The
Autistic Gardener: Wednesday,
Channel 4
Paul
Whitelaw
Julie Nicholson, a Church of England
vicar, lost her 24-year-old daughter Jenny in the 7/7 London
bombings. Jenny was one of 52 people killed that day. Though it
focused on the Nicholsons alone, one-off drama A Song For Jenny
was a sincere tribute to each of those victims and the 52
families who will forever mourn their loss.
Scheduled to commemorate the 10th
anniversary of this senseless attack, the film followed Julie (Emily
Watson) through every harrowing stage of her ordeal.
As with most dramatisations of
real-life tragedies, the early scenes were suffused with a weighty
sense of impending horror. Julie received a concerned call from her
other daughter as soon as news broke of an unexplained tube explosion
in London. Initial confusion gave way to mounting panic as Jenny
proved unreachable by phone. All the family could do was wait and
watch as the reports grew graver. Then came the inevitable,
devastating news.
Numbed by shock and grief, Julie's
London odyssey unfurled as a literal manifestation of, in her own
words, Jenny's stages of the cross. It was a painful, almost
masochistic form of catharsis. The scene in which she delivered the
last rites over Jenny's remains was unbearably sad. Yet she found no
comfort in her faith; God couldn't fill such a vast, unyielding void.
Though it wasn't mentioned on screen, Julie is no longer a priest.
Nevertheless, this was ultimately a
story of cautious hope and renewed faith - not in a higher being, but in humanity. After Julie, dazed and alone, viewed her daughter's body in
London, a taxi driver insisted on taking her back to Reading with no
charge. This simple act of human kindness took on enormous
significance as part of her gradual journey towards some kind of
peace. Despite her anger and hatred towards the bombers, eventually
she refused to let those emotions overwhelm her love for Jenny.
A sensitive, intelligent actress
capable of exuding anguish while remaining outwardly still, Watson
was ideally cast as Julie. Her dignified performance was supported by
a thoughtful screenplay from playwright Frank McGuinness. A fine,
valuable, compassionate film.
The aptly named Alan Gardner is an
award-winning garden designer. With his affable demeanour, neon red
hair, rock tattoos and nail varnish – he looks like a psychedelic
Ken Dodd - he's an unusually colourful addition to TV's never-ending
roster of green-fingered artisans. He's also autistic.
In The Autistic Gardener, he
assembles a team of horticultural enthusiasts from various points on
the autism spectrum as they set about transforming various neglected
gardens into imaginatively sculpted wonderlands. Mercifully bereft of
patronising sentimentality, it's a good-natured and responsible
series in which people with autism unassumingly raise awareness of
their condition while exercising their creative abilities.
They build their confidence and gain
a sense of achievement, their 'employers' get a groovy new garden to
play with, and we enjoy the whole undemanding process while chortling
at Gardner's self-aware narration, in which he cheekily mocks the
clichéd conventions of the TV makeover genre. Everyone's a winner,
baby.
With supposedly well-meaning yet
problematic shows such as The Undateables, Channel 4 is often
guilty of treating people with disabilities as outsider novelties.
The Autistic Gardener treats them as equals. So hats off to
all concerned. When was the last time Alan Titchmarsh reaffirmed your
faith in human nature?
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