The A Word, writer Peter Bowker’s beloved BBC series about a family adjusting to the autism diagnosis of a son called Joe, was never content with just being TV’s best appraisal of that condition. It was always looking beyond, not only at the child and his parents but also at uncles, aunts, grandparents and friends, all of them affected but not defined by having autism in their lives.
By the end of series three, that extended family was so well established that the wedding of Joe’s grandfather’s partner’s son, Ralph, was a significant event.
