TELEVISION / Reviews of the week

Black Daisies for the Bride (Wed BBC2), Tony Harrison's poetic report on Alzheimer's Disease:

'That rarity in television drama: a writer's original, personal insight into simple human tragedy. In its quiet, challenging way, it was magnificent.' Lynne Truss, Times.

'It could so easily have been a cue for piety or sentimentality. But Harrison avoided both traps, struck a note of elegy and then sustained and deepened it as the film developed.' Max Davidson, Daily Telegraph.

'As moving and inventive as the film was, there were too many points at which you felt uncomfortable in ways that went against the grain of the film's sympathies, even a slight sense that Harrison's honest, meticulous verse, which made his previous pieces for television so compelling, had failed before this spectacle.' Thomas Sutcliffe, Independent.

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