As a rule, I don’t chat about the Equality Act when I’m watching TV. But as I sat down to the new series of We Might Regret This – the BBC’s groundbreaking comedy about a disabled artist and her best friend turned personal assistant – I couldn’t help but think about the cultural and political climate that it’s landing in (one in which politicians are genuinely debating whether we should scrap the law that stops employers from being able to sack someone because they’re disabled).
The writers are clearly not naive to this. Filmed last summer as the government sought to cut disability benefits, the first episode opens with Freya (played by co-creator and writer Kyla Harris) in a supermarket filming a public information advert for the Department for Work and Pensions. A prop baby flung over one shoulder and staring up from her wheelchair at nappies on the top shelf, Freya – still half-heartedly doing the disability-themed modelling she started last series – is struggling to get the right expression. Can she use some of her “lived experience”, the director asks. “You saying: ‘Hey, if something is wrong with your body, the government will throw you a fiver.’” Freya offers him another look. “OK, that’s too helpless. That’s Unicef.”
This is what We Might Regret This does so well. It is not a show about disability per se – instead, think messy friendships and sex with men dressed as Smurfs – but it has no issue with skewering an ableist trope if it needs to (and we live in an era where it really needs to).
The last time we saw Freya, she had discovered that her loving but unreliable friend Jo (Elena Saurel) had been sleeping with her partner’s son, Levi (Edward Bluemel). The first series ended with a cliffhanger: Jo had run away – mid PA shift, no less – and Freya was left sitting in her hallway, mouth ajar in shock (but not in a Unicef kind of way).
When we return, Freya and Abe (Darren Boyd) are engaged. Jo is still MIA, while Levi – dealing with depression and newly moved in with his dad and Freya – is concerned his former girlfriend has been kidnapped, trafficked, or “fallen down a big, big well”. Ty (Aasiya Shah) – Freya’s previously fired but now reinstated, delightfully chaotic PA – is less interested in a search party. “We’re actually thriving without Jo,” she says, squeezed between Freya and Abe. “Dynamics here are rock solid. We don’t need any setbacks.”
Ty is in many ways the sort of character who could only come from a disabled-led comedy. The quips are quick and Shah’s delivery is laugh-out-loud funny. But the real humour comes from how our expectations are being subverted: we’ve been socialised to think the wheelchair-user is going to be the incompetent, needy oddball but (wait for it) it’s actually her personal assistant.
See also, Freya’s agents, the Olivias (Emma Sidi and Hanako Footman): two public relations experts with an unrivalled keenness to make a profit from modern brands’ superficial interest in diversity. Visibly excited by Freya’s engagement – and the social media engagement it could bring – they start pitching for a wedding dress designer to co-lab with everyone’s “favourite tetraplegic/upcoming artist”.
“A legit disabled bride as your canvas is gold dust,” one of the Olivias drones.
For a relatively new show, WMRT has always had an enviable little black book of guest stars – and that continues in the second series. Lolly Adefope returns as Susan, the ex-army PA trainer who shouldn’t be allowed to train anyone. Sally Phillips is back as Abe’s ex-wife, still ever present and now writing a book (“on monogamy and gibbons”). British comedy veteran Sophie Thompson joins as Bean, a deeply eccentric wedding dress designer happy to give Freya her options (“This is half a dress, for someone who’s half certain about getting married”).
Still, Freya can’t help but think of her wayward best friend. Sat around the table listening to the Olivias, her fiance, her PA, her future son-in-law, and her fiance’s ex-wife as they share their thoughts on weddings and content creation, she decides it’s time to look for Jo. I won’t spoil the rest of the series but, safe to say, the two of them are reunited with some help/hindrance from self-appointed mediator Ty.
Maybe we would all be better off if we switched off the news for a while. If we soaked up an alternative world in which those with power valued disabled lives, where the media and political spheres worked to subvert rather than give in to our worst expectations of disability, and of each other. For 27 minutes, at least.
