An “Access Coordinator” is a relatively new role in the world of British television. But it is one that disabled-led organisations, such as TripleC and DDPTV (Deaf and Disabled People in TV), have wanted to see brought in for several years.
Jack Thorne helped to shine a light with his blistering 2021 Edinburgh MacTaggart lecture. His stark message was that TV had “failed disabled people utterly and totally”.
Jesse Armstrong (Peep Show and Succession), Steven Knight (Peaky Blinders and the upcoming Victorian boxing drama A Thousand Blows), Abi Morgan (The Hour and The Split) and Jack Thorne (National Treasure and His Dark Materials) have all been honoured by the RTS.
The Fellowships were presented last night during the RTS Patron Dinner at One Great George Street in London.
Corby, a town in Northamptonshire, experienced one of the biggest child poisoning cases the UK has ever seen, after it was exposed to a high volume of toxic waste in the 1980s and 90s.
Children born in this period were three times more likely to have birth defects than the rest of the UK.
In Toxic Town, Jack Thorne (Best Interests) will focus on three mothers who fought on the frontlines for justice, battling in court for recognition of Corby’s mistreatment.
Hilarious, ribald and ridiculous but also achingly bleak and sad. This Is England ’86 is all these things but, more than anything, what it has in spades is humanity.
The 2010 Channel 4 drama features a gang of largely unemployed misfits in an unnamed, impoverished East Midlands coastal town, following England’s progress at Maradona’s “Hand of God” World Cup in Mexico.
The gang comes in all ages, shapes and sizes, sporting the worst 1980s haircuts. There’s no fake tan, fancy nails or gym bodies on show, as you fear there would be in a contemporary version.
Bad Sister’s Sharon Horgan and Good Omen’s Michael Sheen star as a married couple going through an emotional legal battle.
The trailer shows Nicci (Horgan) and Andrew (Sheen) finding out that the condition of their daughter Marnie, who suffers with a rare neuro-muscular disorder, is rapidly declining.
When doctors tell the couple it is in Marnie’s best interests to cease all treatments, Nicci and Andrew enter a legal battle to go against the doctor’s wishes and fight for their daughter’s life.
The multi-award-winning screenwriter Jack Thorne, of Help and This is England '90 fame, is writing the four-part series, telling the universally loved story of a group of young boys and their struggle to survive while stranded on a tropical island.
In an attempt to keep the peace, the boys organise themselves by appointing a leader in Ralph, who's supported by the group's intellectual, Piggy. But there is a rebel in their midst in Jack, who's in charge of signal fire duty but is more interested in hunting and vying for leadership.
Written by the multi-RTS-Award winning writer Jack Thorne (Help), the four-part series sees Horgan and Sheen star as the married couple Nicci and Andrew. The pair have two daughters: Katie, played by Alison Oliver (Conversations With Friends), and Marnie, played by Niamh Moriarty (Jack Thorne’s A Christmas Carol).
Watching two disabled people make love on prime-time terrestrial TV is something many disability campaigners thought they’d never see. But last month, in BBC Two’s widely praised drama Then Barbara Met Alan, we witnessed the eponymous Barbara and Alan enjoy being intimate in a scene that may well go down as one of the most powerful and moving moments of TV drama in 2022.
Following the release of BBC's new factual drama, Then Barbara Met Alan, about the passing of the Disability Discrimination Act in 1995, writer Jack Thorne, director Amit Sharma and disability leads Nichola Garde, BBC, Ally Castle, Channel 4, and Caroline O'Neill, DDPTV, discuss disability and the TV industry. The panel is chaired by Jordan Jarett-Bryan, Channel 4 News reporter.
