This award winning programme and a strong favourite of mine has come to a conclusion this week on more 4. I cannot stress enough how brilliant the entire show was, and if you haven’t watched it, you should. The script was well thought out and I couldn’t imagine anyone else playing Cancer stricken Cathy, other than Laura Linney. This programme was clever, daring, funny and sad, but for me I think the most memorable stuff is all of these.
We started the journey with Cathy, as she tries to deal with being told she is terminally ill from melanoma, the most fatal skin cancer. Here we are presented with juxtaposition in the fact this show is labelled as a comedy. There’s no humour in death – I hear you say, but who exactly has said that there isn’t. I would call it more of a comedy drama, with black humour (joking about death) parts. I have literally laughed out loud at some of the things that Cathy says and other characters, my favourite Cathy line, comes from a scene where a woman tries to cut in line and says that she is in a rush: “Oh well, you see, I’m in a rush too I have cancer and would like to pot my plants and see them blossom before I die.” The cocky woman is stunned, because she doesn’t expect that. This is an example of the type of humour used in parts of the show, satirising death and some people like the cocky woman who cut in line might not get it, but I do.
I have great respect for the character Cathy, and I could chill with her, I like her outlook on life after being struck with cancer. She is out there doing the stuff she has always wanted to do and it starts by kicking out her husband, let’s face it, it did him some good. All the hours wasted she spent cleaning up after him, she wants back, and she doesn’t feel it is right to change him. She is going through a drastic change in her life and wants some ‘me time’. Is she selfish that she doesn’t tell her husband or friends she is sick? Well it’s for us to decide, but her reason is to hang on to normality. Once people know you are sick, their actions towards you change, no matter how much you want to accept they don’t.
I have just watched the finale, and it was very moving as she puts herself forward for a drastic do or die treatment. I can’t fault the script for doing this, as the next season will show the treatment side to cancer; but the hard fact that the treatment makes you sicker before you get potentially better, or die sick would feel a waste of Cathy’s life. Treatment on terminal cancer has a low success rate and for a lot of patients once you start the treatment, it will prolong your life span a bit, but you are too sick to do a lot. People coming to you, pandering for you, looking ill, and just for a little more time, I didn’t think that is what Cathy was about. She wanted her independence; to be able to do things she couldn’t before, soak up life before she got sick. So if this treatment doesn’t work for her in this fictional programme and she dies sick, I don’t think I will be able to leave my bed for a month.
The show pushed a fair few boundaries other than the humour of death, it dealt with race, sexuality, cancer focus groups, and the defamiliarizing social constructs. The message was there was no clear message, you either understood it or didn’t, you either embraced the challenge of seeing a different view point or you didn’t. It was that simple. It made more of a dramatic point in its subtlety than anything I have seen before, and gave an alternative perspective to the concept of cancer, rather than playing the victim. Cathy is a strong and wise soul, and I am sure that the writers and producers will make a great second series and I cannot wait to see it... If I don’t kick the bucket before then.
