Ian, who is having problems with erectile dysfunction, is freezing his wife out. Susan thinks she may be frigid which, understandably, her husband has taken personally. They’re all a lot better off than Dave, mind. He is in love with a woman who is ideal for him but he can’t seem to get past first base. It's making him suicidal. They all acknowledge there’s a problem, because they’re all in counselling with Relate. Slightly less conventionally, they’ve all agreed to have their sessions recorded and broadcast as part of a documentary. And pushing the boat out a little further, they appear on screen in the form of animations. Yes, you did read that correctly.
The documentary has come a long way. Back in a sepia-tinted yesteryear when there was still money for such things, the fly-on-the-wall was a mainstay of the broadcasting diet. Nowadays the more labour-intensive examples of factual film-making have mostly migrated to art-house cinemas, while television has found a new way of looking reality in the face. (But hey, let’s not go there.) There are more spoof documentaries than actual ones on the box these days. Wonderland is currently one of the slots where the BBC parks such proper documentaries as cross its desk these days. The Trouble with Love and Sex was old-fashioned in one sense, being a quietly revealing insight into the alchemical work of relationship counsellors. But the animation thing, that was new.
Apparently there has never been a cartoon documentary before, and you can sort of see why. Factual films point the camera at actual living, breathing subjects. Animation may be a broad church stretching all the way from Family Guy to the hallucinatory images conjuring Allen Ginsberg’s sex epic poem in Howl. But either way it tends to concentrate on telling it how it isn’t; it’s fiction. Directed and produced by Zac Beattie, The Trouble with Love and Sex introduced one to the other and surprisingly they got along rather well.
Of the five people who allowed their sessions with a Relate counsellor to be recorded, four were going through a marital crisis, while the fifth was a single man with a fear of entering a relationship (Dave, pictured right). Rather than allow cameras into the room, the process was documented at one remove: the participants may have been verbally candid but, represented by line drawings, they didn't have to cope with the intimidating presence of a film crew.
But the function of this novel approach was not just to protect identities. It also helped to unpeel deeper truths lurking under the surface of words. Thus Susan recalled the formative disaster when she introduced Iain to her disapproving parents for the first time, and there the ogres were in the room, frowning and tutting. It was even worse for Dave, who visualised the time his father tried to win his love by smothering him with a pillow, then demanding a hug for saving him.
While every word spoken was actually part of the counselling, the animations were able to take us out of the room. Mandy and Ian were depicted on an ice floe which cracked in two. Iain, not good with women crying, ducked out of the path of a giant tear as it splashed. As Dave sat on the top deck of a bus, his dream woman materialised across the gangway, only to vanish as he turned his head. Later, as he edged towards stability, he talked of having a talk with himself and a second Dave appeared on the bed for a Socratic chat.
The animations themselves were beautifully done by a company called Sherbet. Although there’s no way of knowing if the real people looked anything like their avatars, the figures on screen somehow became flesh, expressing themselves in telltale physical detail. Eyes brimmed with sorrow, brows furrowed, arms were crossed defensively, Adam’s apples gulped nervously. And hands were eventually held.
As for the three stories themselves, they were clearly self-selecting. Relate put its best foot forward and helped save two marriages and one life. We saw Ian and Wendy in the bath together (pictured above) drinking champagne to celebrate the return of intimacy. And thanks to the cartoons, the sensible bromides uttered by the counsellors came up nice and fresh. The programme may even save other marriages. It wasn’t an entirely positive outcome, mind. Iain, it was noted in the end caption under a picture of a podgy cartoon male, died of a heart attack last year. The last time anyone mourned a cartoon this much was when Bambi’s mother died.
- Watch Wonderland: The Trouble with Love and Sex on BBC iPlayer
- Visit the Relate website
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