I’m not sure how I didn’t notice it was on when it aired last night, but The Experiment must be one of the most important yet utterly chilling pieces of television I have ever seen. Ostensibly an investigation into Nazi eugenics, I would even go so far as. to call it essential viewing for anyone concerned with disability rights, equality and representation: in the documentary, facsimiles of the Nazi T4 extermination camps are set up in order to see how people today might react to ideas around the forced incarceration, sterilisation and extermination of people with disabilities. Quite frankly I found it horrifying to see how many of the people being shown around these fake institutions accepted what they were being shown. I wanted them to react with white hot rage, and I was glad to see some of them did. Anyone who knew anything about contemporary disability rights would have known that such a place would be totally unacceptable, and frankly part of me wanted to see one of them lose it and start demanding to see the place’s immediate closure. Needless to say, the relief shown on the participant’s faces when they are told it was all a fiction is a joy to behold.

We obviously need televisions like this. Attitudes towards disability are hardening and growing far more extreme. It was horrifying to see how easily people could accept the forced institutionalisation of disabled people, if it was presented to them as somehow humane. I must say, though, that I wasn’t sure I liked how the program towards it’s end segwayed into debates around assisted dying. I’m not saying the two issues are unrelated, but to overtly map quite a contentious political topic onto another might open the program up to accusations of political bias. Those in favour of assisted dying won’t see themselves as akin to nazis, but in the program they were conflated fairly overtly, which I fear opens up a completely new kettle of fish.