I had been eagerly anticipating this one off drama special ever since ITV started the advertising campaign a few weeks previously. The story of a man whose life is torn apart by an obsessive compulsive disorder was certainly a break from the monotonous murder mystery garbage the channel usually churns out in the Sunday 9pm time slot.
However, I'm afraid to report that I was disappointed with the final result. Yes, Dirty Filthy Love was an impressive piece of drama. From the very start the audience was made to feel as in they too were in Mark's obsessive universe, due the intelligent use of camera angles. The viewer almost felt that character's own discomfort themselves. And yes, the central story of Mark's marriage to Stevie breaking down helped to create a genuine sense of sadness for the character & his plight.
However, the feeling created for Mark was one of sympathy, not empathy. I couldn't help but feel that by making light of OCDs, the film-makers had certainly spun out a confused narrative. Was it a comedy? Was it a drama? It was hard to know what the makers' intentions were. Were we supposed to be laughing at the illness, or feeling sorry for them?
Of course, I know the old saying - if you can't laugh at something all you can do is cry. And I know that being able to lighten up about a serious subject is a very healthy thing to do. And OCD is certainly an illness that creates plenty of opportunities for joke-making. I know because I am a sufferer of the condition myself. However, I just felt that there were sometimes were the makers should have resisted the temptation to go for the laugh-factor, & concentrated more on showing the true complexities.
The fact is OCD is a condition that can not be neatly tied up in a Sunday night prime-time slot. For most, there is no beginning, middle and end. Its something that can fester and fester for years, causing a secret, constant pain to the sufferer. The extreme outcome of Mark's case was most certainly done for drama purposes.
I hope that those who watched and had no previous understanding of the condition came away more educated. But I doubt that they did. For the most part I predict that the audience came away thinking, "Its so weird, I just don't get it. Chocolate powder on his face? But I liked him though, he was a nice character."
The thing is OCD is not just something that occurs in extreme cases. I'm sure that most people who watched & were baffled by the quirky behaviours actual have some small OCD 'quirks' themselves. Ask yourselves this - have you ever checked, doubled checked & checked again that all the light switches are off or that the bedside alarm is set correctly? Do you often ensure that everything around you is 'straightened' and tidied up before you relax on the couch? Have you ever been convinced that a particular item of clothing has been responsible for an occurrence of bad/good luck?
Maybe the issues at hand are closer than you may have realized.
