Better off dead? review: If you think assisted dying should be legal, watch this eloquent warning, writes CHRISTOPHER STEVENS

Better dead? (BBC1)

Judgement:

Please, not another documentary about assisted dying. How many times can we watch a nuanced debate that addresses both sides of the issue, weighing the pros and cons, etc.?

These programs always end with us accompanying a terminally ill patient on a harrowing one-way trip to Switzerland, an intrusion into the grief of a poor family for the sake of our morbid curiosity.

Better dead? wasn’t much of a documentary. It made no pretense of being nuanced, balanced or open-minded.

Silent Witness actress Liz Carr was outraged from the start by proposals for what she described as ‘medically assisted suicide’.

She knew exactly what she was thinking, she said, and had absolutely no intention of changing her mind

She met people with opposing views, but because her opinions were unchanging, there was little tension in the encounters

She knew exactly what she was thinking, she said, and had absolutely no intention of changing her mind. Such an overt absence of hypocrisy is refreshing.

However, her approach did mean that after she made her case in an opening rant with fellow actress Lisa Hammond, her argument failed to develop or took unexpected turns.

But what a rant it was. Everywhere she looked on television, she said, on drama, sports or reality shows, people with disabilities were portrayed as “charity cases” or as “inspiration porn” – superhuman stories like the Paralympic Games, or where you’re in terrible pain and now do you want to kill yourself’.

If you tuned in at any point during the hour, Liz made similar comments. She met people with opposing views, but because her opinions were unchanging, there was little tension in the encounters – even when she flew to Canada to interview a doctor who routinely performs euthanasia.

The doctor was the odd one out and tried to convince us that assisted dying was great by twinkling and laughing as she talked about terminal illnesses.

For the only time in the program, Liz couldn’t say out loud everything she was thinking. But it was written all over her face: “This woman escaped from a Hitchcock movie.”

Better dead? made no pretense of being nuanced, balanced or open-minded

This documentary was not aimed at those who agree. It was a backlash, as Baroness Jane Campbell put it, to all those who ‘think they are doing us a great favor by giving us this choice’.

Everywhere Liz Carr looked on television, she said, on drama, sports or reality shows, people with disabilities were portrayed as ‘charity cases’ or ‘inspiration porn’.

Everyone she spoke to, whether for or against a change in the law, only confirmed her own certainties.

If she had been able to meet someone with an eloquence and passion to match hers, who advocated the opposite view – Dame Esther Rantzen, for example – the result would have been a richer debate.

But like Liz, I believe that the taboo on assisted dying exists for a reason. If you shatter it, many disabled, mentally ill and elderly people are in danger of being pushed to suicide. Not every vulnerable person has a loving, supportive partner or child who only wants the best for him or her.

This documentary was not aimed at those who agree. It was a backlash, as Baroness Jane Campbell put it, to all those who ‘think they are doing us a great favor by giving us this choice’.

The danger is that those people have already made a decision.