Terry Pratchett: Living With Alzheimer’s
BBC 2
Who Do You Think You Are?
BBC 1
IN A world where celebrities will cash-in on any ache, twinge, bouts of angst, rotten childhoods and rehab diaries, there was something refreshing about watching Terry Pratchett: Living With Alzheimer’s, as he allowed us into his private world, not for blatant personal gain and certainly not to enhance his public profile for commercial reasons. This was a case of a famous person communicating honest experience and information about the most common cause of dementia – the physical deterioration of the brain.
For a year, the filming of this two-part documentary chronicled the ebbing away of the bestselling author’s concentration, the embarrassment of forgetting once accessible facts and the shuddering realisation that the simple process of reading a book had suddenly become a complicated and awkward act. But one of the many significant things about this man was his determination to use his anger as an energy force to propel him towards a remedy, any cure or treatment that will help him continue to operate as a writer and function fully as a human being. “When you have Alzheimer’s, you look for positives”, he said. He looked for them in the Britain and the United States, could not find anything conclusive, but remained an optimist – believing that, at some stage, Alzheimer’s will be tamed.
Pratchett began to sense that something was wrong when his computer spellchecker started acting stupidly and his screen showed the same sentence typed twice. Slowly, he realised that it was not the technology but his own inability to think straight at times that gave him the confusion of “a Clapham Junction day”. When he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, he decided not to shrink into the background. Instead, he made his predicament public, received an overwhelming worldwide response and decided to “fight the bloody disease and hit back in some way”. Here was a man exposed, showing his embarrassment at no longer being able to put on a tie, risking some mockery by wearing clumsy head contraptions designed to provoke positive reactions in his brain and giving us permission to witness his forgetfulness when performing to audiences. It was as heartbreaking as it was courageous. His bursts of enthusiasm followed by rueful observations that he was on a path of diminishing time were poignant. He was fighting his own brain, trying to minimise the erosion of visual recognition, knowing all along that he might win a few skirmishes but not the war. His positive spirit was potent.
Following the Pratchett programmes, I felt an urge to shout “Bravo” at the television. After Fiona Bruce’s Who Do You Think You Are? there was a diametrically opposite compulsion to bellow “So what?” This was not necessarily all her fault. The problem with this programme is that interest levels are determined by the family history of the person whose family tree is under the spotlight. If incidents and individuals are not sufficiently substantial, an hour of watching dusty files being leafed through by white-gloved hands, documentary padding using old black-and-white film and lingering shots of distant scenery becomes a very long chore.
Bruce’s family history was just not compelling enough, despite the importance of it all to her, including stories of relatives in prison, the poor house and on the miserable battlefields of the First World War. She adopted “Gosh, wow, amazing” responses to snippets of information, but the exercise just seemed shallow and pointless, since, wearingly, we have been down the poverty and war route several times before with other celebrities.
If the producers want to maintain a must-see programme, they need to choose participants with a wider variety of backgrounds, age ranges and some unusual in-depth storylines. Otherwise the audience will spend its time stifling yawns and reaching for the remote control. Fiona Bruce dreaded her ancestors being dull and in the process ended up making a very dull episode of this inconsistent series.
Joe Cushnan
