Did anyone see ‘coming down the mountain’ last night on bbc1? To me, it was the most interesting thing on telly for a while, and it would be awfully poor form for me, as both a student of film and a disabled person, not to say anything about it here. It concerned the relationship between two brothers, one of whom had Downs Syndrome. To begin with, their relationship is tense, and the ‘normal’ brother strongly resents the needs of his SEN sibling. They have to move so that the bro with downs could go to a special school (something which wouldn’t happen if all schools were inclusive). Things get worse and worse, until the ‘normal’ one takes them both up a mountain and, in a rage, pushes his bro off a cliff. He instantly regrets this, but his bro isn’t dead. He gets the rescue team, yada yada yada, the boy recovers. During this time, the two get to know each other – it seems that they had never actually talked. They find that they have a lot in common.

Thus this is a fairly simple story about somebody realising what needed to be realised. On one level, it’s a fairly innocuous little tale, if somewhat melodramatic, about two brothers finding each other. The outcome was obvious, even predictable from the title. Yet, on another level, both characters are metonyms for widespread society: all disabled people were once resented as burdens, and in quite a few places, mainstream culture tried to get rid of us. Now things have changed and ‘we’ are being accepted. I think there is cause to share the optimism shown at the end of the piece – indeed, the very fact that the brother with ds was shown to have a girlfriend, albeit one who herself has ds, is a symptom of the change in the portrayal of disability. While there is still quite a way to go, and I long for a day when disability is purely incidental in TV drama, I see this as a good step in the right direction.