Cast Offs

Cast Offs is a new comedy-drama from Channel 4 about a fictional reality show about six disabled people (played by actors who share their characters' disabilities), voluntarily marooned on a British island. Each episode focuses on a different character, their backstory alternating with scenes from their stranded present; last night belonged to wheelchair-bound Dan, beautifully played by Peter Mitchell. The show-within-a-show conceit so far seems unnecessary: just as the flashback narrative is drawing us in (last night's was full of tough and tender details of life as a newly disabled man), everything stops for stilted banter on the island. Unless this is intended to do something as crass as prove that disabled people can be as dislikable as any non-disabled reality show contestants, it seems pointless. Maybe this strand will reach the standard set by the other element soon - the second episode is tonight, so we shall see.

Cast Offs, Channel 4's new drama about six disabled people comes with a narrative scaffolding designed to get you over any viewer prejudice that might be aroused by the phrase "drama about six disabled people". It presents itself as a kind of Big Brother reality exercise, in which a selection pack of the "differently abled" are marooned on an island for three months to see how they survive. "This isn't a camping trip, April..." said one of the participants. "We're here to prove something." One of the things they're there to prove, it seems, is that the disabled can be just as dirty-minded and grumpy and clumsy in the face of disability as anyone else - the early scenes offering a positive orgy of political incorrectness of various kinds. That's all a little laborious, as is the reality show armature itself, which is never used to satirise television itself (as it might easily have been) but only as a way of getting these very disparate people into one place, so that they can have flashbacks about their ordinary lives. But the flashbacks are surprisingly good, far exceeding the gimmick that has winched them into place.

Each episode cuts between ensemble scenes on the island and a more focused version of one character's back story. Last night, it was Dan's turn and this account of a young man coming to terms with his paralysis was beautifully done, including some touching scenes between Dan and his parents, in which all the self-conscious gaminess of the island sequences dropped away to be replaced by something that looked awkwardly true to life. It may be that future episodes do more with the gimmicky frame, but for the moment it's what's inside it that's worth watching.

That crunching sound you might be able to hear is the sound of new ground breaking. This series is the kind of thing Channel 4 was created in order to air - a programme that feels properly trailblazing, in this case in its portrayal of disabilities. Cast Offs is a six-part drama about a fictional reality TV show that takes a group of disabled people to an island and leaves them to fend for themselves. Disabled actors play the roles and helped with the script, and as a result it's a believable portrayal of grown-ups who drink, swear, have sex and arguments and reveal their character flaws. The action switches between the island and the earlier home life of Dan, a young paraplegic man who has joined a wheelchair basketball team in the hope, you feel, of escaping his over-possessive father. The macho basketball team is well drawn, as are the wrinkles of romance when you're a chair user. The trouble is, the scenes on the island feel forced. This is billed as a comedy drama, but that mainly means the characters laugh at things that aren't funny. Judging this opener in purely dramatic terms, Cast Offs is underpowered, but as a TV breakthrough it's huge.

In the post-Big Brother era, C4 is facing an identity challenge. At worst, as with The Execution of Gary Glitter, this has meant well-intentioned programming with spectacularly crass results. Cast Offs, a series in which people of various disabilities are brought together on a remote British Island for a fictional, I'm-a- Celebrity-type reality show, may raise similar fears but, thankfully, it's very well handled. Tonight's episode features Dan, a paraplegic who finds himself taken under the wing of assertive, three-foot-tall Carrie. This series works because of its humour and brusque unsentimentality, rather than any excess of sensitivity.

Eighteen months ago, Channel 4 marooned six disabled people on a remote island to see how well they could survive for 90 days. Not really. These six may be disabled but they are all actors and this subversively comic and rather dark mockumentary-drama shows a rarely seen, unsentimental side of disability.

Tonight the focus is on Dan (Peter Mitchell), a good-looking young Irishman who's in a wheelchair after a recent car accident. His back-story shows him and his desperately well-meaning family still struggling to work out how to deal with this.

One early shot where the crew dump Dan on the island and leave him to wheel himself across the muddy beach and over the sand dunes is typical of the take-no-prisoners style and black humour the writers are aiming for.

If it makes for uncomfortable viewing at times, it's purely intentional - although its rather cruder moments come across as plain clumsy.