Jayne Dowle: Courage of a drama that makes us face up to matters of life and death

SWITCH on the television any time of day or night and you will find death. Gruesome murders. Lacerated bodies on mortuary slabs. People slipping away in hospital with their family sobbing around them.
Coronation Street's Roy and Hayley CropperCoronation Street's Roy and Hayley Cropper
Coronation Street's Roy and Hayley Cropper

Switch on the television tonight and you will see a different kind of death. Coronation Street’s Hayley Cropper will take her own life to escape the pain of pancreatic cancer.

When you consider some of the ways soap opera characters have been dispatched over the years – run over by a tram, killed by an aeroplane falling out of the sky, electrocuted by a hairdryer – it seems a quiet way to go.

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Yet it is causing a great deal of controversy over whether the right to die is a fit subject for a television plotline.

We’ve watched the popular character, played by Julie Hesmondhalgh, go through torment. That trip to Blackpool, when the tender scenes with her on-screen husband Roy made 
me sob.

The extreme reactions of her friends and neighbours. Is she selfish? Cowardly even? The awful realisation that there was no cure and she was going to die, whatever happened.

It has not been easy to watch. In fact, there have been times when I have had to walk away to make the lump in my throat go down. Yet there is something so compelling about Hayley’s journey. I have to know how it ends.

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This is the heart of the debate. Should the right to die be the subject of “entertainment”?

Before we answer that we have to ask what we actually mean by “entertainment”. As Lord Reith proclaimed in 1922, the point of television is not only to “entertain”, but to educate and inform.

His values applied to the BBC, but they remain watchwords for British broadcasting across the board. And whatever we think about this plotline, we can’t argue that we haven’t been educated and informed by the journey Hayley Cropper has taken.

Is a soap opera the right place for it though? This is the big question. Well, to be honest, I’d rather engage with the right to die issue through a drama than watch a documentary.

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Indeed, I make a conscious effort not to watch anything which has “real” people deciding to end their lives. I simply cannot tolerate the emotional trauma of seeing individuals in extreme pain go through the process of telling their loved ones that they want to die.

And I can’t cope with the visceral reactions of those loved ones as they come to terms with the situation. For me, a documentary is too real. I need the wall of drama to make it easier to bear.

I have to say that there has been a certain degree of snobbery from campaigners and commentators about the fact that it is happening in Coronation Street.

I’d wager that if this was some big BBC drama stuffed with RADA names, there wouldn’t be half as much angst. The fact that it’s an unashamedly populist programme watched by almost nine million viewers means that we can’t ignore it or file it away.

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That’s a lot more people than watch Newsnight by the way. It’s wrong though to think that the right to die is purely an intellectual matter. Both sides can be addressed and rationalised by clever people in a television studio, but that doesn’t get the debate going around the water cooler next morning.

The final scenes are also to be broadcast before the so-called watershed, which is causing some consternation. I’d say that the argument against this is irrelevant and outdated.

There are numerous channels of digital television which give young people 24/7 access to material that’s much more disturbing. And if it worries you that your children might be upset, there’s always “record”. Or the off switch.

What about the influence on viewers though? Could it sway them into suicide? Imagine watching tonight’s episodes with a terminally-ill person beside you, perhaps a member of your family who knows there is no cure for their condition.

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This is where the grand proclamations of public posturing amount to nothing more than words. Would it influence your relative one way or another? Would it sway your opinion too? Only you can answer that.

I respect the view of campaigners such as Peter Saunders of Care Not Killing, a pressure group which supports palliative care for the terminally-ill. He argues that the storyline could steer people towards suicide. His point is that they may not have thought of this ultimate option before.

However, I’d ask him to find me a terminally-ill person in excruciating pain who has not considered taking their own life already. And find me a loving husband or wife who is not torn between yearning for their partner to stay alive just a few more weeks and helping their suffering to end.

When that diagnosis is staring you in the face nothing will protect you or your loved ones from the truth. You have to face facts more horrendous than anything a television soap opera can show you.

Those who criticise the courage of Coronation Street would do 
well to remember that.