This is a pointless TV review.
A Song For Jenny (BBC1) told the true story of Jenny Nicholson, a young woman killed in the bombing at Edgware Road tube station. 52 people died in the London attacks, and we don't know how most of the bereaved coped with the deaths of their loved ones, and we hope we'll never need to find out for ourselves. We might shudder, on seeing a news flash, wondering what we'd do if we got a phone call or heard a policeman's severe knock on the door, but we can flinch and cast the thought away and just get on with what we were doing. We don't need to answer the dark question 'What would I do if that was my daughter, my husband, my mum?' We can shove it away, and the awful things that particular thought comes dragging with it.
But on 7/7, families across London were forced into what most us can mercifully ignore. They had to pick up the ringing phone, answer the door, and accept the acceptable news. We can't know how most of them coped, but Jenny's mum, Julie Nicholson, dealt with her terrible grief by writing about it. She wrote a book, A Song For Jenny, into which she packed the sadness and rage she felt at Jenny's cruel, sudden death, but she also wrote of the overwhelming, tremendous love she felt, and, of course, still feels for her lovely daughter, and how she won't allow her good, generous feelings to be stamped out by hate.
The BBC have now dramatised the book and here I am trying to review it, and realising what an utterly pointless exercise that is. I can't view the programme as a critic, especially not as a critic of drama, because how can I, or any of us, debate the characters' motives? Julie Nicholson's motives, words and actions were driven by a furious grief that I beg I'll never know and so, not knowing it, how can I approach it? I could do little when watching this drama except sit there silently, sometimes crying, occasionally glancing around the room at my boyfriend working at his computer, or my sleeping dog on the floor, and just being grateful we were safe and well.
The drama was immensely powerful, but how could it be otherwise, given its unutterably sad story? Yet, even if, as a piece of TV drama, it had been no good, that would hardly have been worth noting because the drama is not the source of this story. Neither is it the book from which it's taken. The real source of everything here was Julie Nicholson's love for her daughter, Jenny. So even if drama and book both failed as pieces of art, it wouldn't matter one jot. All that matters is that Jenny died but her family loved her and won't forget her. That's the message to be taken away from this: a young woman's cruel death shouldn't have happened and her mother's love will always endure. Beside that, questions of how "good" the programme was are trivial.
And it must have been a good drama, because it moved me. It made me cry. It made me glad for the people in my flat, and for my niece who's coming to stay and wants to help me bake bread. It made me think she'll have to stand up on a stool to reach the kitchen counter. But wait, do I have one for her? There - this drama sent me off onto thoughts of family, and not of grand gestures, but simple, tiny things like getting a stool for Sofia so we can bake together. Would that be some kind of comfort to Mrs Nicholson, that her story might pull other families closer together in simple thanks that they're still here?
I would hope she is able to draw comfort from thoughts of family because, at the end of the drama, she said she may be losing faith in God. As a priest, this would not only mean a loss of faith but loss of her life's work. God was everywhere in this story but He was often silent, useless or simply damaging. He brought no comfort or relief to Julie Nicholson, and, of course, the bombings themselves were carried out by religious fanatics. God offered nothing. When the family were drawn into church for Jenny's funeral, comfort was given, not from scripture, but from poetry and extracts from Jane Eyre. Literature, music and the gathering together of family and friends was where love and solace came from - not from religion.
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