TV Review: Enid | Wonderland: Can We Get Married? | Doctor Who | Children in Need

Published on Saturday 14 November 2009 13:44

Ever since Michael Sheen snagged a Bafta for his extraordinary performance as Kenneth Williams in Fantabulosa!, BBC4 has been keen to solicit plaudits with more biopics about beloved cultural icons. Unfortunately most of them have dwelt, with varying degrees of propriety, on the supposed darkness lurking behind the public façade, causing each one to feature a scene in which the protagonist collapses on the living room carpet while clutching a glass of gin.

Despite boasting strong performances from some of Britain's finest actors (and David Walliams), there is something unedifying about films in which dead celebrities are exposed as drink-sodden misery-guts with dysfunctional sex lives. It's not that the truth should be ignored, it's just that screenwriters are usually morbidly overeager to wallow in the sordid details, often at the expense of accuracy.

BBC4's latest volley of dustbin-snooping is the Women We Loved season. If Enid – in which Helena Bonham-Carter plays cherished children's author Enid Blyton – is anything to go by, it should be subtitled "But Not Any More!". I've no idea whether Blyton really was cold, spiteful, arrogant, scheming and unpleasant in real life, but that's how she's portrayed in this sustained assassination on her character.

Even if she was, what really is the point of making a film whose sole message is "cuh, wasn't Enid Blyton a cow?" Writer Lindsay Shapero attempts to contextualise her character's awful behaviour by postulating that she never recovered from her father abandoning the family when she was a child, so therefore spent the rest of her life in a state of denial and arrested development. But even the most half-baked armchair psychologist would avoid that as an excuse for the way she maltreats virtually every character in the film.

When Shapero finally asks us to sympathise with Blyton, it's impossible because she spends so long portraying her as a self-centred monster. Shapero is in love with the idea that, even though Blyton could skilfully tap into the imagination of children supposedly because she never grew up herself, she couldn't relate to her own offspring. She is shown as adoring the attention of her pre-pubescent fan-base, because they corroborate her distorted self-image, whereas she regards her daughters as an irritating burden. At one point she even cooks their pet rabbit.

It's not quite Mommie Dearest, but Shapero's obsession with depicting her as the mum from hell is almost laughable. Casting that adorably odd little girl from Outnumbered as one of Blyton's daughters was presumably intended to make her look even crueller. Strangely enough, Blyton's notorious xenophobia and class prejudice are barely mentioned, Shapero perhaps feeling that this particular job didn't require any more hatchets.

Bonham-Carter does what she can with a thankless role, but short of a film about Papa Doc Duvalier starring Gary Glitter, I can't conceive of a biopic in which the lead character is so mercilessly unsympathetic. It almost makes you feel sorry for her.

In Wonderland: Can We Get Married?, director Vanessa Stockley eavesdrops on the lives of Emma and Ben, a young couple with Down's Syndrome. Together for six years, they recently moved into a small house in a windy seaside town. As this touching film begins they are planning their engagement, despite gentle opposition from their parents. Their principal concern appears to be that getting married will halve the couple's benefits. As the film unfolds, however, it transpires that there may be other barriers, not least Emma and Ben's own concerns about the future.

The thorny question of whether having children is a wise idea is never addressed directly, but Emma – who articulates her concerns more openly than Ben – is clearly fretful about the possibility. Neither of them, however, are in any doubt about the love they feel for each other. Indeed, it becomes clear that the most important thing is the way they carefully guide each other through life, a fact symbolised by scenes of them hand in hand, cautiously crossing busy roads.

If this all sounds rather sickly, it's not. Empathetic and sensitive, Stockley never wallows in condescending sentiment. Her film also challenges any preconceptions you may have had about people with Down's Syndrome, and their ability to function independently in the wider world. Like most of the documentaries in this splendid series, it offers a candid, occasionally humorous but never cruel glimpse into the curious lives of others.

Alas, the end is nigh for David Tennant's much-loved tenure as Doctor Who in The Waters of Mars, the last special before he bows out for good over the Christmas period. Unfortunately, preview DVDs weren't available, but from the clips I've seen it looks to be a satisfyingly creepy episode. Lindsay Duncan guests in an adventure in which the Doctor lands on a space station on Mars where one drop from the indigenous water supply turns humans into rampaging zombies. Why can't all TV drama synopses be that inviting?

There is an exclusive preview of the Doctor Who Christmas special in the annual Children in Need cringe-a-thon, which otherwise boasts more dancing newsreader and karaoke soap star tomfoolery than you could ever hope to tolerate for charity.

This article was first published in The Scotsman Magazine on 14/11/09