We Need to Talk About Stillbirth (Radio 4) | iPlayer
Primo Levi’s The Periodic Table (Radio 4) | iPlayer
66: We Were There (5 Live) | iPlayer
We’re about to enter summer, that strange no-school-no-parliament time when BBC commissioning editors throw up their hands and say “Oh, all right then”, and air programmes they don’t quite know what to do with. The BBC is obsessed with slotting shows into something bigger: a series, a history, a season, a unifying concept spread over a year that both showcases the properly famous and allows us ordinary punters to “contribute”. In summer, these guiding principles go to hell; or on holiday, anyway. Summer is the time for documentaries about obscure manufacturing practices, dramas featuring hilarious hairdressing salons. Make the most of it. There are signs that autumn will be the season of Brexit.
We Need to Talk About Stillbirth is a documentary that would never slot easily into a season, simply because of its topic. Stillbirth is far more common than we imagine – 10 times more frequent than cot death: nine babies are stillborn every day in the UK – yet somehow, we haven’t worked out how to prevent it, nor deal with it when it happens. In fact, much about this emotional, terrible topic seems muted and unacknowledged. Most normal pregnancies have only two scans, at 12 weeks and 20 weeks. The second half of pregnancy is monitored by not much more than a tape measure around your bump.
Presenter Emma Beck, whose second child, Mary, was stillborn at 36 weeks, took us through contemporary science on the topic. More “joined up” midwifery has reduced the incidence of stillbirth: Beck visited a hospital in Taunton where the rates have been halved. In St George’s in London, ultrasound monitoring continues after 20 weeks’ gestation. Still, the majority of stillbirths remain unexplained. It is thought that the placenta, that magical, under-researched, spontaneous organ, is the key. “If it stops working, it’s like multiple organ failure,” said one doctor.
This was a programme with dignity; moving and informative. Its tone was perfect – except when some of the doctors spoke. God, the way medics say “baby”, as though that’s the name of the unborn child: “Baby has a lot of growing to do.” “Baby isn’t developing as we’d hoped.” Awful. It’s so sad that a determined effort to help the parent feel more involved often, unfortunately, has the opposite effect.
I thought of this when listening to the adaptation of Primo Levi’s The Periodic Table, a series spread across two weeks of Radio 4’s 9.45am drama slot. Levi’s book, which combines chemistry and autobiography, Auschwitz and maths, is hailed as a work of modern genius. And yet the tone of these dramas seemed to push the work’s brilliance further away, rather than bring you closer in.
Although this was a well-edited drama, lovingly made, with nice sound touches (a letter being read out loud fading into the writer’s voice), it was rendered almost corny by the acting. And I don’t even blame the actors. It’s not their fault. It’s just that documentary and drama have moved on so quickly in the past few years that this type of acting – clear, careful, actor-ly – now sounds madly fake. And thus, it alienates when it should be bringing you closer to the work. It would have been better to have had The Periodic Table as a (Long-Gone) Book of the Week.
Speaking of the past, 5 Live has a two-part doc on (deep sigh) the 1966 World Cup final. England won that particular game, did you know? Oh. You did. Still, 66: We Were There was a nice attempt to bring some sort of truth to that overblown event. There was good colour from those who were actually at the final, or who were involved in getting the players there. Tom Courtenay narrated, which was lovely. Also lovely were the voices of the 1960s football commentators. So sharp and precise, as though a tuning fork were speaking. They made the words “Nobby Stiles” sound almost romantic.
