It’s Very Rare to Have a TV Show That Features People With Disabilities, Let Alone as Main Characters. This Will be Ground Breaking. Adam Humphries reports.
For anyone who was been watching the hit TV series, The A Word, are no doubt familiar with one of its main characters, Joe, the on-screen son of Lee Ingleby and Morvin Christie; two parents who try to face the everyday challenges of life with the young Autistic son.
Well, the BBC has commissioned a spin-off called Ralph and Katie, played by Leon Harrop and Sarah Gordy. As fans and viewers of the series may also be aware, Ralph and Katie also have Downs Syndrome which is a genetic condition. In the last series of A Word viewers will recall that both their characters tied the knot, this for many gave a positive message that people with these problems can have the happy ending they wanted.
Even the shows producers have referred to it as a natural step forward. And their right.
The show will follow the happy couple after their nuptials and see them facing the domestic challenges that they will encounter in each episode as they embark on their first year of married life. Since they both appeared on A Word, they have gone on become much loved characters on the show so it’s going to be great to see them get their own series which will allow them to continue their own story as a newly-wed couple.
As someone who works in the Health and Social Care sector and has a disability themself, I find this commissioned spin-off to be absolutely fantastic news, and I’ll happily tell you why; The disabled community have long been a marginalised group ever since they first began appearing on TV, they were either background, subjected to stereotype or hardly got a look-in.
In my first column I spoke quite openly about the representation of disabled people on TV and how things appeared to be changing, and hopefully for the better. And it seems that since that went out things on TV have done just that, and quite frankly I’m chuffed to bits.
Ralph and Katie will hopefully obtain the same amount of credibility and respect as its main show where portrayal of disability is concerned in the it helps bring light, kindness and warmth to those in it. One of the messages that I hope that this will give to the disabled community is that they can also have the same relationships that their abled-bodied counter-parts can have, basically that there is life beyond the disability itself.
Like The A Word, I hope that this gets commissioned beyond the first series cos not only will it be great TV but it also sends out the much-needed message that even a marginalised community can have a fair share of the TV pie.
