It is probably beyond inappropriate to suggest, but television has a new double act: Professor Peter Tyrer and his patient Daniel Turnbull, whose personality disorder was the subject of The Madness of Dancing Daniel, another fantastic Wonderland (BBC Two). It was produced and directed by Fergus O'Brien, who specialises in the strangeness and extremes of the human condition - most notably with The Armstrongs, that monstrous (and monstrously watchable) couple who ran a double glazing company in Coventry like a fluffy dictatorship.
Here, O'Brien followed Professor Tyrer, of Charing Cross Hospital in London, as he tried to secure residential treatment for Daniel, whose condition is serious. As Professor Tyrer said, people such as his young client are “hidden lepers” - but their relationship was pure Odd Couple. Professor Tyrer, with his quiet, dogged earnestness, would take Danny shopping - in his very proper voice, “We need to get to Primark now” was priceless - and Danny, with queeny imperiousness, would call him (and you really can't convey it without hearing it) “professor” with a thrilling kind of hauteur, as if at any moment he would shrug his coat off and expect the prof to pick it up. “I want a plain red tie like Tony Blair would wear,” Daniel insisted, channelling Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada. Their shopping trips could take four hours, we learnt: respect to the professor, his dedication and care were sterling.
Daniel's first memory was dancing to Madonna in 1985; that's when he realised he wanted to be a dancer, he said - and it was strange watching him keep focus and ask the professor questions or remember the traumas of the past, and then just as quickly zone or spin out physically. His condition seemed to lead to a careering sequence of peaks, troughs, sulks, clarity, moroseness, aggression, sadness and laughing.
Professor Tyrer found a home for him, much to Daniel's displeasure. “I cannot run off to Plymouth, I live in London,” he said as if he was an urban matron facing a particularly vexing lifestyle change. But London was where he knew, for good and bad. He was abandoned by his father, his mother was a heroin addict. Amazingly, Daniel had been adopted by the most marvellous man, Dennis, who brought him up with lots of love, private schooling and lovely holidays. But Daniel's personality disorder meant he was expelled from school. He burnt down the flats he lived in, not deliberately, but by leaving his jeans and trainers on the stove.
The story was compelling and O' Brien's direction virtuoso. There was a lovely shot of the professor and Daniel coming back from Plymouth on the train (Daniel was being supplicant and meek, which the professor knew was his way of saying how much he hated the idea of moving there). Daniel looked out of the window to the greying late afternoon and countryside speeding by and the professor leafed through the papers; an odd, companionable silence hummed between them.
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The professor was no eccentric, though. He conveyed to Daniel that tough choices had to be made. Dennis desperately wanted him to be well, but as O'Brien said, in his waspish and sensitive narration, sometimes you wanted to shake Daniel. Just as something good happened he seemed to sabotage it, such as with his interview for a place in a London residential home. Daniel himself recognised this. In his quiet, sustained way, O'Brien peeled back every layer of his characters' personalities in this wonderful film.
Danny secured his place in the London home. The day of the move, there was an unbearable moment where he didn't want to leave his Charing Cross room. But then he got to the new place, realised he could wriggle out of sight under the bed and seemed happy. O'Brien served up Madonna's Into the Groove as the credits rolled. Daniel still sees the professor every month. The hope is he'll get a flat of his own in a few months - but Daniel, no jeans or trainer fricassee this time, OK?
The Torchwood (BBC Two) team was liberating a giant piece of alien meat from a factory - it was a little like Jamie Oliver at his most militant meets Free Willy. In the best exchange of the episode, Gwen (Eve Myles) confessed to her partner Rhys (Kai Owen) “I catch aliens”. In response, Rhys blazed, “Aliens? In Cardiff?”