THE INCREDIBLY TALENTED LUCY, REVIEW: FURTHER EVIDENCE OF THE PIANO WINNER’S BRILLIANCE
Lucy Illingworth is the schoolgirl who captivated viewers on The Piano, Channel 4’s tear-jerking talent contest. Lucy is blind, having been diagnosed with cancerous tumours in her eyes at nine months, and has a chromosomal condition that causes significant developmental delay. Communication through language is difficult; through music, she soars.
The Incredibly Talented Lucy (Channel 4) is timed to coincide with the second series of The Piano and I half-expected it to be one of those this’ll-do spin-offs that ITV churns out to tell us what happened to I’m a Celebrity… campmates once they’ve left the jungle. But it was much more nuanced and interesting than that.
The programme opened a window into Lucy’s life, with cameras following her at school and at home. It was lovely to see fellow pupils so proud of her achievements. Her teaching assistant said: “I don’t want her to be just kept for us, hidden away. I want everybody to know how amazing Lucy is.” We saw Lucy practising the piano at home, asking Alexa to play applause at the end of her pieces. She enjoys performing but, like everyone else of her age, is entering those tricky years of teenage strops.
There was also a wider story here about the benefits of providing a music education, and of the challenges of raising a disabled child. Lucy’s mother, Candice, admitted to fears over the future. “They’re expected to be an adult at 18 but that isn’t going to happen with Lucy. She’s always going to need help and that terrifies me. It’s an awful feeling: how old am I going to be when I leave this earth, and who’s going to look after her?”
The most complex aspect of the film, though, was the focus on Lucy’s piano teacher, Daniel Bath. Gradually, it emerged that he suffered a breakdown in 2010 and his wife worries that the hours and effort he puts into working with Lucy are putting him under pressure. There was a difficult-to-watch scene in which he took Lucy to perform at a jazz festival, where she seemed unhappy. Afterwards, he felt guilty: “It made me realise how much I project my musical life onto Lucy. I’ve not acted in her best interests.”
If this had been one of those cheerful, by-numbers documentaries, it would have ended with Lucy and Daniel on stage at the Coronation Concert. As fate would have it, he was denied security clearance – no explanation given, but he is a supporter of Extinction Rebellion. An awkward ending, but fitting for a story that isn’t a simple fairy tale.
2024-05-05T22:21:11Z dg43tfdfdgfd
