EMPLOYABLE ME, BBC2, 9pm
“WHY’VE you not got a job?”
“You tell me.”
This new series shows us a range of talented, skilled, energetic people who simply cannot find jobs because of various disabilities. They meet experts who can match their skills and unique qualities to suitable employers. I remember the first series a few years ago, at which I wept uncontrollably with laughter and sadness. I loved it. It was so perfectly inspiring and heart-warming.
In tonight’s first episode we meet 22-year-old Ryan, who has an extreme form of Tourette’s and cries “volcanic cucumber!”; and 52-year-old Andy, formerly a dashing motorbike journalist who had a stroke that left him with mobility and speech problems. “I’m trying so hard to get a job to show that I’m needed,” he says. But even if there are silly laughs from the wild Tourette’s outbursts, the show makes it horribly clear that discrimination laws have little effect on some employers, who may be prejudiced without even realising it.
THE FORCE: THE STORY OF SCOTLAND’S POLICE, BBC1, 9pm
IS it bad timing which sees this new series on the Scottish police hit the screens alongside Scot Squad? On Monday nights you’ll get a serious documentary on the polis, then on Tuesdays you’ll get a spoof one.
The first in this three-part series is titled “The Beat Patrol” and is about the role of “the humble constable” who might be called upon to help an old lady, batter down a door, apprehend a robber or deal with a horrific accident. The job can throw anything at them. Cameras follow a group of police as they batter down a door to apprehend a drug dealer who has tried to barricade himself in with the use of a sofa, and he then swallows his stash of heroin.
And we are taken back to one of Glasgow’s most infamous crimes: the murder of two policeman on Allison Street in 1969.
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