7 Up, the TV series first made in 1964, would never have worked on radio. Ten young boys and (only) four girls were interviewed as they set out on their lives, with the intention of checking up on them every seven years thereafter to see what might have happened to them. They’ve now reached 56 and the series instead of looking forward to what these children might become is looking back over where they have been. The sad, guarded eyes of the young boy in a care home in 1964 made a powerful impact in black and white (colour had not yet arrived on TV), as did the sparky smile of another boy. Words alone somehow would not have had the same impact. We needed to see their faces, and those expressions, foretelling, we could have imagined, what would happen to them.
Quite the reverse is true of a Radio 4 documentary, The Trouble with Kane (produced by Sue Mitchell). It owes much to the fly-on-the-wall techniques pioneered by the 7 Up team, but it would never have worked as a TV programme. There would have been a suspicion of contrivance, a sense that the rows were being manufactured. We would not have felt quite so intimately involved with the deadlock faced by Kane and his family, nor been made to feel so aware that this could happen to any family with children.
Kane is in trouble with his Bangladeshi parents for skiving off school and smoking cannabis. They’re terrified of his rages, his swearing, his absolute refusal to conform, to respect, to stay within the boundaries of home or school. He’s only 12.
After being caught with a friend carrying two bags of cannabis, Kane has spent a night in a police station. Now he and his family have been referred to a new specialist family-therapy unit. Instead of Kane being taken through the criminal justice system, an attempt is being made to sort him out, take him off drugs, at the same time as helping his parents deal with him day-by-day, minute-by-ghastly-minute. (His mother daren’t go out while Kane is at home and says her life has come to a ‘standstill’, until ‘we’ve got some kind of control over the situation’.) Amanda, the therapist, will visit them three times every week for seven months. She’s also on call, and can be contacted by the parents at any time, if the situation deteriorates.
I caught the first part while driving home last Monday night and had one of those I-can’t-get-out-of-the-car-till-it’s-over moments. At first we could hear Kane in the background, muttering in a deep, growly, truculent voice as Amanda tries to work out from his parents and his teachers what’s been going on with Kane to turn him into this out-of-control kid. He’s in the room as they talk to her. But he’s not taking part.
Gradually, though, the difficulties begin to mount up and a menacing row erupts, as Kane swears at his Mum and Dad and threatens them. He’s mad at them for taking Amanda’s advice and introducing rules to curb his behaviour.
The conflict was visceral. You could feel it coming at you, almost physical in its impact. Amanda, the therapist, has to intervene. ‘Stay away!’ she tells the parents. ‘Blaming him is not going to solve your problem,’ her voice rising. ‘Blaming him is not working for you right now.’
She was right. But taking us inside the row like that made us see just how difficult it must be to deal with an angry pre-teen, who’s bigger than you, who’s on drugs and who’s really angry. You just don’t know what they’re going to do next.
If we’d seen the argument, it would have lost that tension, that sense of involvement. The pictures would have distracted from the intensity of the moment, that reality.
Over on Radio Humberside they’ve been celebrating the success of their two elderly stars, Betty Smith, aged 90, and Beryl Renwick, 86. The two ladies-who-laugh have been on air since 2006, invited to take to the microphone by an enterprising studio manager, David Reeves, who spotted their potential when they visited the BBC local radio station. Now at last they’ve won a Sony Radio Award for their ‘entertainment’ value, beating the likes of Frank Skinner and cult hits on 6, Adam and Joe.
Don’t get too excited. Much has been written about their superb comic timing, their laughter, their golden touch on air. But the real genius lies with Reeves in putting them behind the microphone, and in realising quite how refreshing it would be to hear two not-so-young-any-more ladies chortling about their taste in men, and daring to do their own version of Queen’s ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’. It does have to be heard to be believed. But no cameras, please.
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