December 8, 2005


'Tearaways' bring tears to the eyes

TELEVISION does not have to be spectacular or over-the-top to be effective. Indeed, often, it is the more modest and subtle that has greater effect.

'Gap Year Grans' took nearly 10 years to make its way from Australia to the UK's digital Sky Three channel, but the unpretentious documentary has great beauty and strength in the way that it records so much of the human condition.

As a medium, television can capture and communicate emotion at its most personal and powerful. One person's tears can say far more on television than the weeping and wailing of thousands, the close-up of a single tear rolling from the corner of an eye eliciting far greater sympathy and understanding than the howling of hordes.

'Gap Year Grans' told the simple, but at times overwhelmingly heart-rending, tale of elderly people who have chosen to leave their settled homes to travel around Australia.

The short way round
Going anti-clockwise, and staying on the inside lane, believe it or not, is 60 miles shorter than going the other way, the commentary intriguingly revealed.

Characters abound. One woman had bought a small camper van which has seen better days.

She has been widowed for years and had always put her children first. She breaks down, but is rescued by the goodwill of another couple. She admits being lonely and alone, honesty forcing its way out from behind the facade of social niceness, where it has been repressed for decades.

Another, a retired, widowed doctor, was making the trip on a bike, finding in the 1990s, the hippie forced to sacrifice the free love of the 1960s for the social conventionality and family life of the 1970s.

Such characters were so modest, so unassuming, but their life-experiences, taken individually and collectively, so strong that they could not but be wonderful television.

Royal settings
Oh, yes, and of course, the amazing Australian landscapes, the spectacular coasts and the dramatic outback deserts could not help but provide the director and camera operators with the most wonderful backdrops, even if the wonderful lighting did limit the amount of work available to freelance lighting crews.

Australia's overpowering outback added a dimension to 'Priscilla, Queen of the Desert'; it added to Gap Year Grans too.

Giving 18-year-olds all recognition for leaving their nests to travel the world has obviously been wrong, in more ways than one.

The over-50s can fly too; circumnavigating Australia clearly has much to offer, and it does take about 12 months.

For some, taking to their recreational vehicles not going to be a 'gap' way of life, it would be permanent, or at least as permanent as their health permitted.

The producers of Gap Year Grans had had to tout their idea hard and long to get funding, from a variey of sources; it seemed a pity that the resulting gem had taken so long to reach the screens of the UK.