Review: Cast Offs
- Article 5 of 5
- Action Network, January 2010
It’s a rare drama that puts the disabled character front and centre, a rarer one still that has six lead characters played by disabled actors. Channel 4’s ‘Cast Offs’ did just that, offering a fully rounded look at six people stuck on a deserted island for a reality TV show – six people who just happened to be disabled. Broadcast twice a week for three weeks in the run up to Christmas, it was the first decent mainstream drama with disabled actors on British TV.
Page 1 | Page 2 | All 2 Pages
Each episode of the six-part series carried forward the story of the characters and how they fared together on the island, while focusing in turn, usually in flashback, on a different character’s life. Each of these backstories was approached differently, with some episodes comedic and some tragic.
The first episode showed everyone arriving on the island, and focused on Dan (first-time actor Peter Mitchell, a professional footballer until a car accident in 2002). Six months in a wheelchair, Dan was sweet, slightly naive, and liable to have his pants stolen and put into a postbox, at least when he was playing with the local wheelchair basketball team. Until arriving on the island, he had problems coming to terms with his new condition and with his independence: his parents treated him like a child and waited up for him whenever he went out – no problem at all when he brought women back with him. On the island, he begins a relationship with another of the islanders – but will the relationship survive their stay and life afterwards?
Tom (Tim Gebbels, a blind actor who used to be a drama producer for BBC Network Radio) had no problems with his life. Sardonic, dry, very funny and handy with a shotgun, Tom may have been blind, but he had plenty of girlfriends, although most of his relationships only lasted a month. His flashback showed him trying to poach his flatmate’s very sexy, blind ex and tutoring a famous actor how to play Gloucester post-blinding in King Lear (the actor’s obsession with Tom’s allegedly ‘heightened senses’ was all the more ironic because he was played by William Gaunt from 60s superhero show ‘The Champions’). But he was also very, very lazy, a problem in such a small group, which he was only able to alleviate by using his shooting and trapping skills to kill the fox that had been eating the islanders’ chickens.
Martial artist and political activist Will (probably the most famous of the cast-offs, TV presenter/actor/musician/performance artist Mat Fraser, who is thalidomide-affected. He was also the first disabled actor to be in a mainstream TV ad) was running away from his life. His mother was dying of cancer, but he didn’t want to speak to his father. He rarely got to see his son, and he was fired from his job for sending inappropriate letters to drug companies. But for the sake of the others, he was tempted to break his vegetarianism and tried to kill a pig to feed them all when food supplies ran low.
Possibly the best segment was deaf wild child Gabriella’s (Sophie Woolley, a deaf writer and actress who writes short stories and plays for theatre and Radio 4). She turned up on the island 30 weeks pregnant – at least, that’s what she claimed, right up until the point she gave birth four weeks ‘early’. She was supposed to have married a nice, normal man, but when her school boyfriend turned up on her very normal wedding day, she was tempted to return to her old ways – and sabotaged her own happiness in a fit of self-hatred.
Research scientist April (Victoria Wright, a first-time actress who works for a disabled children’s charity and is an advisor to charity Changing Faces) had cherubism and remained something of an enigma throughout the early episodes, before eventually being revealed as the group’s own Bridget Jones.
Back home, her best friend Kevin from the research laboratory insisted on involving her in a game where they try a new experience every week. During this, she appeared to fit the traditionally expected role of someone who isn’t classically beautiful. Ostensibly pining after Kevin, she got rejected during speed dates, shocked people at an art class when she unnecessarily took her clothes off to model and scared a delivery man.
But it soon became clear that prejudice against her wasn’t blanket. She took a man home with her from the speed dating and the friendly delivery driver rapidly offered to help her kill the live lobster he had delivered. And she wasn’t sad because she was pining after her colleague – she was sad because her beloved husband had died.
3ft 6in, unemployed, with an ego the size of multistorey car park, livewire Carrie (Kiruna Starnell, an Australian LAMDA-trained actress who has dwarfism. She has appeared in ‘Moulin Rouge!’ and ‘EastEnders’) was the last character to be examined in detail. Interestingly, we didn’t get a flashback to her previous life. Instead, we switched to a flash forward to what happened to the cast offs once they returned from the island. Commitment-phobic Carrie switched to yet another new job after getting bored of her previous ones, and this time she decided to take up clowning for children’s parties under the tutelage of ‘Green Wing’s Mark Heap. Finally, she found her forte and understanding her issues, reunited with Dan after their island romance had seemed to have fallen apart.
‘Cast Offs’ was an undoubtedly important show, and truly pioneering. “I’ve spent years fuming at the TV at the appallingly rubbish, knee-jerk, entry-level, piss poor, socially inept-style gags around deafness or disaability,” says Woolley. “I’ve spent years thinking ‘one day’ and that day has come.’”
Page 1 | Page 2 | All 2 Pages