bob the moo Bill and Wendy Ainscow are a middle class couple living in Birmingham. One night they both take an overdose of sleeping tablets but are unsuccessful in their joint suicide attempt and wake up in hospital. The reason for their desperation is their 32 year old daughter Lisa. Lisa has a form of Asberger's that means she has to shop, fears germs, loves shoes and hates her father. Bill has been stealing from his post office to try and fund his daughter's habits and has been given a custodial sentence, leaving Wendy to cope on her own.I was interested in seeing this film because I had read about this story in the papers – well, a few articles following the suicide of Bill. Sadly though it seems that the writers here have also only the newspapers to go off, or at least their only aims seem to have been to deliver the story at the level of the papers. I say this because the film starts with the basic pointers and doesn't really go beyond them. Bill is at the bottom of his pit; Wendy is weak willed and Lisa is manipulative. This is where we start and more or less this is where we end. The film delivers obvious emotions in the way one would expect from an ITV Sunday night drama and it is lazy and rather dull.I waited for the script to do something more interesting with the characters and develop their pain into the realm of being real but I waited in vain. Nothing really came beyond the basic stance we started with and it was not long before I was bored of the constant, samey emotion from the characters. Spall sets his autopilot for "glum" and just stays there. He is never a real person and his performance is weak. Blethyn is not so poor but she has little more to work with in regards the material so she just keeps doing the same thing over and over in the hope that it will be good enough and, in fairness, it is all the material seems to want from her. Staton is more lively although her character is so poorly written that who knows what to think of her; she does well in regards emotion but she comes across as manipulative and lazy rather than sick – which I suppose is part of the mystery but doesn't help matters.Overall then a very basic Sunday night ITV drama based on a true story that manages to be worthless for those of us who read the short articles surrounding the story. The basic building blocks are put in place but not built on and instead we just sit and stare at them without any insight or commentary. The cast are so-so because the script leaves them with nowhere to go or nothing to explore and the whole thing just gets by on the tragic emotion of the situation – which might be enough for some viewers but not for me.

lrrooster2002 Whilst the film 'Rainman' and Mark Haddon's book are both primarily works of fiction, this film is a dramatisation of a true story that, at the time of writing, is still going on.The fact that psychiatrists and social workers seemed flummoxed is the centre of this tragic tale. Without a proper diagnosis - a label - Lisa and her family receive little help. This is not about Asperger's. The medical teams decided it was not 'just' Asperger's, but they couldn't decide what it was and this condemned the family to the life they had and which the film tried to portray.Rebekah Staton was very good as Lisa. If she seemed detestable then that is the point. Difficult to love her, but still unconditionally loved by her mother in the only way she knew how. Difficult for her to show love, but she did in her own way by demonstrating an overpowering need for her mother to be around, to 'look after her' and not to 'spoil her day'.It's not an easy film to watch. Life is not easy sometimes. I thought it was well done. I don't like 'wobblevision' but its use when Lisa was being sectioned highlighted her panic, fear and confusion. The stark quality of the film was enhanced by the brave decision of the producers not to have incidental music, so well done to them! I don't think the point of the film was to help anyone associated with Asperger's. If there was a point in showing this story at all, maybe it was that we can't help those we can't label and that we should open our minds to understanding people when they are in distress, for whatever reason and however unpalatable.

annajennym R.D. Laing in his books exposed the massive influence of dysfunctional families in creating schizophrenia. The same analysis could be done in this film of how the family creates Lisa's disorder...I only hope that Lisa can read Laing, as no-one in the film was really offering her this perspective and it could help. Yes, she has been hysterical and shown no care for her parents at times, but this bad behaviour looks like part of a cycle ... after all, her mother's equally desperate approach to life is when she suggests seriously that the way out is a suicide pact for the whole family. Deeply scary and so sad.Neither mother nor daughter is helping the other to live and it's hard to take sides as to where the fault lies, but I think - if they wanted to live - someone would have to help each of them to entangle the deathly games they are embroiled in. They are toxic for each other!

brice-18 The film 'Rainman' and Mark Haddon's book 'The Curious Incident of the Dog - ' helped one empathise with people with Asperger's Syndrome, but this high profile TV film made Lisa, the 32-year old daughter of middle-aged parents (played by Timothy Spall, at his glummest, and Brenda Blethyn, at her most irksome) a manipulative monster. Her parents are driven to joint suicide attempts twice by her impossible demands, and at the second attempt her father successfully removes himself from the scene, leaving her mother to continue to collude with her insatiable child. As usual, psychiatry and social services are made to seem flummoxed (though it's refreshing when a Birmingham Social Worker finally confronts Lisa with reality). Rebekah Staton may well be brilliant as Lisa - I can't tell because I found her so detestable! How on earth could this film help anyone associated with this distressing disorder?