Guest Author - Lauren Evans

Next week on the Beeb promises to be an exciting ride, in most part due to the beginning of new six-part drama 'Apparitions'. Starring Martin Shaw of Judge John Deed fame, 'Apparitions' centres on a Roman Catholic priest who gets drawn into the eternal fisticuffs betwixt good and evil, and becomes an exorcist. His sidekick, trainee priest Vimal, is having a few possession problems of his own, and is told that he should actually be batting for the Dark Hordes of Satan rather than the nice guys. In the first episode, showing on BBC One on Thursday 13th November at 9pm, a ten-year old girl asks for Father Jacob's help in exorcising the demon she believes is possessing her father. 'Apparitions' looks set to be a gripping BBC drama, with some exciting mysterious elements and a flirtation with the supernatural. Although I understand that this is designed as a primetime winter drama and not a documentary series, to carry this off I believe the series will need to address a couple of very serious points to maintain any kind of believability whatsoever. One is the documented cases of serious physical and mental abuse that takes place in modern-day Britain under the guise of exorcism and the other is the rather random assumption that people today would be more likely to call a Roman Catholic priest than a psychiatric professional, as they watch a loved one in the throes of a psychotic episode.

If you're one of the latter group, you may be interested in 'Horizon - How Mad Are You?', coming to BBC Two on Tuesday 11th November at 9pm. According to the programme, 1 in 4 people in Britain has been diagnosed with some form of mental illness in their life. Whether that's stress, anxiety, depression or something else, it's clear that the stigma surrounding mental illness is a curious construct, much like harbouring a deep suspicion of left-handed people (approx 24% of Brits are left-handed, apparently). In this Horizon two-part special 10 volunteers, half with psychiatric disorders and half without, complete a series of tasks, ranging from performing stand-up comedy to mucking out cows, under the watchful eyes of mental health boffins who have accepted the challenge of working out who is "mad" and who is "normal". It'll be interesting to see how the doctors get on, and whether those diagnosed with mental illness display a better ability to cope with some of the challenges.