TV review: What's Killing Darcus Howe? | Cast-offs

Published on Tuesday 24 November 2009 20:43

AFTER Channel 4's appalling docudrama The Execution of Gary Glitter a few weeks back, the title of sister channel More 4's documentary What's Killing Darcus Howe? took on a worrying tone. In fact, it referred to prostate cancer, from which he is in recovery, but nevertheless this, too, was a programme that should not have been made – at least not like this.

Director Krishnendu Majumdar has known the veteran anti-racism campaigner and professional controversialist for five years. This film, as he kept telling Howe, and us, was to be a "journey" exploring the disease's particular prevalence in his community. It apparently affects one in four black men and they're three times more likely to develop the disease than white men.

Howe thinks the problem is a racist society that isn't doing enough to alert black men to the dangers; Majumdar thinks the macho attitudes of many men of Caribbean ancestry are stopping them from getting tested because they can't face the rectal examination – or, as one guy (white, actually) says, "I'd rather die than have someone stick a finger up me bum."

But though the director kept stating this, the issue was never really explored. Instead, this became a film about the massive fallout between director and subject, as Howe and Majumdar's relationship broke down to a dreadful extent halfway.

The director seemed to be nagging at an ill, 66-year-old man, prodding him to be filmed when his hip was hurting, telling him he drank too much and was wrong to bring everything down to race. Howe, who has always been notoriously touchy (he last hit the headlines by getting into a shouting match with Joan Rivers on the radio) and whose hormone treatment for the cancer induces mood swings, responded furiously. He abused Majumdar to an extreme degree, declaring he was fascist, racist and half a dozen other things.

It was extremely uncomfortable viewing; the director should have rethought things and made the film actually about black men and prostate cancer, without making Howe more than a brief contributor. Just because footage exists, doesn't mean it should be shown – Majumdar should have followed the old wartime slogan and asked whether his "journey" was really necessary.

Bizarrely, though, it sort of ended well, as the camera crew were attacked in Brixton, and Howe went to their rescue, taking on some armed thugs with nothing but his walking stick. And his determination to force the son of an old friend who'd died of the disease to get tested also had a positive outcome.

He's a mad old bugger, but you'd want him on your side.

New series Cast-Offs, on the other hand, isn't just necessary but hugely overdue. The "gimmick" of this reality show spoof is that the characters who have disabilities are actually played by, gasp, people with disabilities, not able-bodied actors – which, of course, shouldn't be a gimmick at all but something as obvious as not having someone black up for "Darcus Howe: The Biopic".

The first episode took a while to introduce the set-up: six participants in a Castaway/Survivor-type show are on an uninhabited island, with each getting a flashback to explain why they're taking part. The jokes, though, are mostly sharp and caustic, particularly as they awkwardly try to get to grips with each other.