HORIZON (BBC Two) returned to celebrate its 40th anniversary last night. I love it, particularly the predictions of imminent global catastrophe and the hushed voiceovers, making minor scientific discoveries sound like ominous moments in thrillers.
But the strand has always had a serious, public information mode, too, and they went for this more sober option in last night’s opener, The Truth about Vitamins. The gist was that many of the vitamin supplements sold by a vast, lucrative industry are a complete waste of money. They give you more vitamins than your body needs, or can process, and in the case of Vitamin A, too much can actually cause medical problems, including liver disease and osteoporosis.
Most surprising was the reaction of three heavy supplement users, all women. One decided to give up Vitamin A, but two said they would continue popping the pills because “it works for me personally”. One of them had admitted swallowing a vitamin C tablet whenever she got near someone with a cold. Research indicates this has no preventative effect. It seemed the pills were actually more important psychological props, warding off the fear of ill-health.
We all have ways of controlling our personal demons, I suppose. If we don’t, we’re in deep trouble, like the poor creatures in My Crazy Parents (Channel 4), the first of two documentaries asking: “What is it like being the child of parents who are mentally ill?” Beavis once asked Butt-head “What do you say when something sucks, but like, it REALLY sucks?” “Um, it sucks A LOT,” came the Wildean riposte. On the evidence of these first two case studies, having parents with mental problems really sucks, no matter how much you love them. In fact it sucks a lot.
The two families were neatly balanced, presumably on purpose. Seventeen-year-old Martin’s mother died of cancer seven years ago. His father became clinically depressed and hit the bottle. Martin’s younger brother was taken into care. Martin threw himself into school work, eventually winning a place at Oxford. At home “the child” became “father to the man”, though not in the sense Wordsworth had in mind.
Advertisement
We followed Martin’s devoted, dogged attempts to keep his father sober, and win back his brother. But the task was beyond his powers. Dad lurched from sincere but meaningless promises of reform to drunken bouts of self-pity, bitterness and aggression. As filming progressed, he got worse, despite a fleeting moment of joy eating paella together on holiday in Spain. Sometimes Martin’s distress was so sharp it felt intolerably intrusive to be watching. By the end he was aching to escape.
The second family was all female, and the situation, if possible, more tragic. Elaine hears voices in her head. Once they told her to kill herself and her children. “I find that really sick,” said her 15-year-old daughter Lucy, horrified. Elaine used to cut herself, too, in the abdomen, once nearly cutting her own bowel. But it was Elaine who had established a degree of control in this family.
Eaten up with suppressed anger and confusion, Lucy was cutting her wrists and forearms. They were a mass of scars. She had started drinking heavily, too. By the end of the film she had been sent to a residential psychiatric unit for teenagers. Elaine was relieved, seeing in the treatment, the promise of salvation. “Lucy’s embarking on a spiritual journey,” she said. “I’m really proud of her.”
But despite this shred of dubious optimism, this was no drama, complete with uplifting ending. Martin’s dad needed more help than Martin could give him. Lucy could still spiral into the same state as her mother. It was the experience of sharing their hopelessness that made this film so harrowing.
Now hopelessness is one problem that does not trouble Ray Mears. He wanders through the world’s least hospitable terrain, radiating optimism and enthusiasm like a patio-heater on legs. In last week’s first episode of Ray Mears’s Bushcraft (BBC Two) he made life in Stone Age Britain look like a camping trip with the Famous Five.This week he was in the Amazon jungle, gleefully knocking up shelters and benches with a machete. To Mears the rainforest is just a big branch of Ikea, except that his self-assembly furniture doesn’t have comical Swedish names or fall apart five minutes after he’s put it up. It is full of natural medicines, too. Pillpoppers please note.