This week’s Panorama told an ancient story, one probably only a very few years younger than that of boy-meets-girl. Which is that girl then gets pregnant, finds out the boy is violent (or vice versa) and the baby, raised in an abusive home, goes on to abuse herself and neglect her own offspring, and nobody lives happily ever after. Unless, of course, a fairy godmother steps in.
Panorama – Addicted: Last Chance Mums followed two 37-year-old women, Hayley and Leanne, as they entered Trevi House, the closest thing there is to a wand-waving magician in real life. It is one of the last few facilities to offer addicted mothers the chance to get clean without having to separate from their babies. Despite an estimated one-in-20 pregnant women being dependent on drugs or alcohol, most of the other facilities that once existed have fallen victim to cuts. Trevi’s 10-bed capacity is only half-full because local authorities increasingly struggle to find the £38,000 that it costs for an intensively interventionist six-month stretch under the care of a 30-strong team of therapists, nurses and support staff – whatever the hundreds of thousands of pounds and unmeasurable amounts of human misery spared by breaking the cycle of misery.
Hayley and Leanne have histories of childhood abuse and domestic violence. Hayley’s mother was an alcoholic – “We used to get slaps and abuse.” A man who sexually abused her almost every day for nine years until she was 14 was sentenced to eight. Leanne’s child’s father was violent before she became pregnant and became “10 times” more so afterwards, “shattering bones in my face, strangling me unconscious, kicking me downstairs. I used to say: ‘Stop hitting me, you’ll kill the baby.’” I haven’t used any exclamation marks because Hayley and Leanne recount the fact of their lives in flat, affectless tones. Expression of pain admits it and they cannot afford to do so.
Leanne’s ex-partner once put her in hospital for 26 days. During her rehab, she testifies at his trial and he receives three and a half years. Another old story.
If the women at Trevi House relapse while on the programme, that’s it: their children will be taken from them. Leanne has one child in care already – Hayley has had three of her six taken away. Her youngest, one-year-old Codie, has been under a child protection order since birth. It counts as a happy ending when Hayley completes her rehabilitation and he is upgraded to “child in need”.
These are powerful stories but, as a subject for Panorama, the plight of addicted mothers was problematic. Over and above the question of exploitation, which must arise whenever people this vulnerable are placed on camera even in the most respectable of documentary brands, there was the fact that the almost identical subject was covered by the BBC just six months ago, at greater length and in that sense better, in the two-part Addicted Parents: Last Chance to Keep My Children. Panorama is supposed to be an investigative programme, but there was nothing new here, no analytical depth – nothing much at all beyond a harrowing of souls. That is valuable in its own way, of course, but this felt too fleeting to be much use to anyone.
But Leanne and Hayley have remained clean since the programme was made, and for that we must salute them and wish them whatever passes for a fairytale ending in this brutal world we’ve made.
Scottish sitcom Two Doors Down (BBC Two) returned last night for a third series. It is, as Joey Tribbiani would say, some gentle comedy, dude, although it’s still an exquisitely accurate rendering of the claustrophobic horror that masquerades under the benevolent title of neighbourliness.
There is a vegan at Eric and Beth’s Burns supper (“Do you feel sorry for animals or do you just like the attention?” says Doon Mackichan’s Cathy, still unable to see a set of ribs without sticking the sgian-dubh in) but the main source of disruption and laughs is Christine (Elaine C Smith), back from a visit to her daughter. “How are you?” asks Beth brightly. “I’ve been in Wales,” replies Christine, and not since Thora Hird’s wordless mumbling about Guildford in Dinnerladies has a single line contained so much distaste.
I am left to ponder the question that must surely stand as one of the great mysteries of our age: namely, why isn’t Elaine C Smith in everything? All the time? Everything, all the time. Why not? I believe her in this and as Mary Doll in Rab C Nesbitt and in everything in between like I believe no one else. So, are her absences from my screen justified? Och, as Christine puts it, yer baws it is.
