The A Word's Peter Bowker - the man putting learning disabilities on prime-time TV

There’s a scene in the second series of Peter Bowker’s The A Word in which seven-year-old Joe Hughes repeats the words that have been circling around him in whispers. “I’m autistic, nobody wants that,” he says, matter-of-factly.

The drama, which began in 2016 and visits the Hughes family in two-year increments, has been praised for its unblinking look at autism and the considerable ripple effects within an extended family. If the first series was about denial, and the second about acceptance, then the upcoming third series, which returns to BBC One this week, is a celebration, Bowker explains.

“I’ve always made it clear that I know how extreme autism can be and how there are parents struggling with children in distress. But that is not what I’m going to put on screen - because no one will watch it. If we’re going to get this talked about then that isn’t the way through,” he says, speaking on the phone from his home in London during lockdown.

While The A Word is a reimagining of the Israeli series Yellow Peppers, relocated from the Arava desert to the Lake District, it is informed by Bowker’s experiences of a friend coping with an autistic child and 12 years working in special education in the 1980s, when “people with learning disabilities were still confined to hospitals”.

“It was a world I knew,” he says.

Disability has been one of the recurring strands in Bowker’s versatile output. The first play he tried to write wasn’t made, but his 2002 series Flesh and Blood, which told the story of an adopted man (played by Christopher Eccleston) tracing his birth parents and eventually coming to accept their mental impairment, was hailed as a breakthrough.

“I’m very proud of it because it was the first time I’d written from the outside of the experience. I allowed myself to take a distance and think, actually, for most people, this is a strange and unknown world.”

There are around 700,000 people on the autism spectrum in the UK. If you include their families, autism is a part of daily life for 2.8 million people. And yet it remains a touchy subject.

“Every family will have somebody with or a connection to autism, but there's still a lot of fear around it,” Bowker continues.

Indeed, The A Word hasn’t come without criticism.

“With drama you have to cheat the time scale. And that was the main thing that parents have complained about - that I made it look easy. In reality, people wait a long time to be diagnosed and don’t always get the support,” says Bowker.

“Sometimes people think a programme is going to be preachy if it features somebody with a disability… And sometimes people just don't like dramas that don’t have murder in them,” Bowker continues with a wry Mancunian laugh.

However, Bowker, who went on to write the Bafta-winning Marvellous in 2014, admits that the world in which he wrote Flesh and Blood already feels like a different era.

“There was one director who didn’t want to cast people with learning disabilities in the lead roles. Chris [Eccleston] and I dug our heels in because the whole point was to build something that allows two people with learning disabilities to play these roles. Things seem to have moved on in the last 20 years, in a good way,” he explains.

Indeed, the talent pool is expanding. In recent years, dramas such as Silent Witness, Breaking Bad and Call the Midwife have all featured disabled actors, as well as soaps Coronation Street, EastEnders and Holby City who “do it better than anyone” according to Bowker.

“But there’s still a general societal thing of people underestimating the talent of those with disabilities,” he says.

“We need to start asking embarrassing questions like: ‘What is your disability and how does it restrict what you might be able to do?’ You think we make progress, then on the other hand, fairly fundamental stuff needs addressing.”

For the latest series of The A Word, Bowker has broadened the story out to some of the wider characters. As well as Joe, there’s teenager Mark, played by Travis Smith, who is also on the autistic spectrum, and Ralph, the son of the lover of Joe’s sprightly grandad Maurice (played with sarcastic glee by Eccleston) who has Down syndrome.

Whereas the casting process for Max was relatively straightforward - “You cannot be asking a five-year-old with autism to play another five-year-old with autism, it’s just too young, especially when they’re going to be acting scenes of distress a lot,” says Bowker - the team were unequivocal in opening up access to disabled actors for the roles of Mark and Ralph.

Both were cast by Andy Pryor, who has worked on, among others, Trainspotting, Cracker, Stan & Ollie, Gentleman Jack and Russell T Davies’s forthcoming Aids drama Boys. He is a firm advocate for inclusivity in the arts and has been casting director on Doctor Who since its return in 2005 and, yes, brought in Jodie Whittaker to play the first female Doctor.

Most notably, however, Pryor cast Ruth Madeley in last year’s BBC dystopian fantasy Years and Years because “she’s brilliant, not because she’s disabled”. The script was altered accordingly.

“Opportunity breeds opportunity,” says Pryor.

“What we’d all love would be to get to a place where anybody can play any role. But there's still a balance to be redressed. Right now I’d be slightly uncomfortable with, say, casting a straight actor in a gay role. I think it's very hard for the LGBTQ+ community to sit and watch their experience being played out by people who haven’t lived their experience," he says.

“I don't think you necessarily should have to have lived that experience to be able to play it, but part of our job is about creating opportunity where there hasn’t been opportunity before,” continues Pryor.

When it comes to autism, Pryor explains that clarity is key. He consults the National Autistic Society on how to advise actors about what to expect during the audition process and builds schedules more sympathetically.

Travis Smith was 16 when he got the part of Mark and went from being a member of his local Welsh am-dram group to a member of a BBC prime-time drama within weeks.

“When Andy rang to offer me the role, well, I’ve never heard my mother scream so loud,” says Smith over the phone from his home in southeast Wales. “It was my first proper role and I was determined to make Mark authentic, because 16-year-old Mark was 14-year-old me,” he says.

The third series focuses on the developing relationship between Mark and Joe’s father, Paul (played by Lee Ingleby). Joe is now 10, his parents have divorced and live 100 miles apart, and his patterns have started to change. He begins to reject his love for music, the very thing that brings this father and son closer, and so Paul begins to look to Mark as a way to understand what’s happening to his own son.

“They become quite attached and teach each other lots of things,” explains Smith. “I don’t always relate to the situation in the drama, but I definitely relate to the emotions and feelings.”

Smith is a credit to the programme and is outwardly positive about the progress being made within the industry. “Every time I see a person with autism or cerebral palsy on TV it fills me with hope,” he says.

Ingleby himself, however, believes that Bowker’s characters are not people in extreme circumstances. “I grew up on dramas like The A Word - dramas about families. But now there aren’t that many shows that are just about families and people in seemingly everyday life. No one is murdered in The A Word, there’s no car chases, no hook or whodunit. It’s like a drama of the week and it’s very unique in that respect,” he adds.

“Pete often pulls the rug in terms of shifting the stories and you’re sometimes left quite shaken. He isn’t afraid to make actors say or do things some might feel we shouldn’t," says Ingleby.

Episode five of the new series features the wedding of Harrop’s character, Ralph, to his girlfriend Katie (played by Sarah Gordy), who also has Down syndrome.

“The whole thing is glorious, I’m so proud of it,” says Bowker. “I’m hoping it will have some impact and be seen as a life that is full and fulfilled.”

“What’s been wonderful is that people have written to me saying, ‘That is my kid; that’s my family.’ Fundamentally, the bottom line is that you want to do right by those people who are living it,” Bowker continues.

“With the characters in The A Word, I’ve tried to show that autism is a spectrum. But I would also hope that it’s seen as a drama about people just trying to understand.”

The third series of The A Word airs weekly, beginning tonight on BBC One at 9pm; all episodes are available on the BBC iPlayer