A Short Stay in Switzerland PT8

Julie Walters has become a kind of brand - the best kind.
Give her a role with any substance and you know she'll
deliver a Bafta-worthy performance and leave the audience
damp-eyed. And so it proves here, in the moving true story
of Bath doctor Anne Turner. Having watched her husband
suffer a slow, undignified death, she was diagnosed with a
similar neurological condition. "Rotten bad luck," her character muses. Walters plays Turner as the best kind of
frank, feisty, upper-middle-class mum. "Let battle
commence," she cries as she sets about taking on the
illness she knows is incurable, but she soon decides she
should be allowed to take her own life with dignity, even if
UK law doesn't allow "assisted dying". It's a decision her
three grown-up children struggle to cope with. Sadly, their
characters are short-changed by Frank McGuinness's
script; far better is Harriet Walter as a Christian friend with
whom Turner has a searing confrontation over a last game
of chess. It's one of several shattering scenes in a drama
that forces us to think hard about some big questions.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Julie Walters
• BBC
• drama
• Lyndsey Marshal
• Frank McGuinness
• assisted Suicide
• Dr Anne Turner
• Patrick Malahide

[gicandido]

: )

I'm happy you're enjoying it ^^

Kiss

[RickRolled4912]

We're watching this in R.S (Religious Studies)

[bus140808]

animals are allowed to die in dignity so why do people have to travel all the way to switzerland to stop suffering?

[BrotherOfBullets]

@RickRolled4912 same here

[lilraz08]

is that guy gay? just wondering because he said he is marrying a dude :S

[pepo2235]

I'd like to take my life but I'd like to go to heaven too.

[Guaguanco11]

@doog52761 I believe that sex is a precious gift a way of expressing a deep spiritual connection with another human being. To have casual sex is to deny the true purpose of sexual experience. Many people agree with me. Yet none of us want there to be a law that makes casual sex illegal and punishes those who engage in it. I respect that other people get to make their own decision about what they value and how they want to live their lives. You should do the same.

[doog52761]

I believe this life is a precious gift that we can never get back once it is gone. To end it prematurely is to rob oneself of the purpose for being here.

[doog52761]

Where thickest lies the forest growth

We find the patriarchs of both.

And they hold counsel with the stars,

Whose broken branches show the scars

Of many winds and much of strife.

This is the common law of life.

[doog52761]

Good timber does not grow with ease.

The stronger wind, the stronger trees.

The further sky, the greater length.

The more the storm, the more the strength.

By sun and cold, by rain and snow,

In trees and men good timbers grow.

[doog52761]

The man who never had to toil

To gain and farm his patch of soil,

Who never had to win his share

Of sun and sky and light and air,

Never became a manly man

But lived and died as he began.