Teenage girl to inject heroin in BBC film

A teenage girl will be shown injecting heroin into her neck and arm inone of the most harrowing and contentious broadcasts ever shown on British television.

Seated on a bed in a dingy room, Michelle Pickthall, 18, is seen breaking the end off a cigarette, dropping it into a bubbling spoon and watching as brown liquid surges into a syringe. Tilting back her head, she winces as the needle enters her neck, before slowly relaxing with a bittersweet sigh.

Her actions form the climax of a groundbreaking docu-drama about heroin abuse that combines conventional fly-on-the-wall footage with improvised reconstructions played out by Michelle, fellow addict Shaun Mann, 21, and other residents of their Middlesbrough neighbourhood.

The powerful 90-minute film, Little Angels, will be broadcast on BBC2 on 13 August, on the cusp of the 9pm television watershed.

Drug campaigners have given it a tentative welcome, expressing hopes that it may explode some of the myths surrounding addiction. However, it is bound to alarm many viewers and provoke debate about whether it is ethical for film-makers to record potentially life-threatening behaviour without intervening to try to prevent it.

Director Paul McGuigan admits to having wrestled with this question before deciding to let events take their course in the knowledge that they would still have happened "in another room" had he turned away his cameras.

He had hoped to complete the film, which opens with Michelle and Shaun struggling to stay "off the gear" after being released from prison, without having to witness anyone "shooting-up".

"I knew from day one what would happen, but I really hoped it wouldn't," he said, adding that he came to feel like a "protective parent" towards Michelle and Shaun, particularly when they began to lie to him about their slide back into addiction. This impulse led to his one intervention, preventing Michelle injecting herself in the neck again, moments after her first hit.

Mr McGuigan said, while he did not want to "preach" at his subjects, he felt like stepping in to stop them harming themselves "all the time".

While the real-life injection scene is certain to be its major talking-point, the film makes disturbing, if frequently moving, viewing throughout. Though their senses often seem dulled, both Shaun and Michelle are prone to moments of startling clarity and self-awareness.

At one point, in a moment reminiscent of a monologue from Trainspotting, Michelle says: "Heroin made me feel warm, relaxed, snuggled up in 100 comfort blankets. It made me forget everything...

"Heroin never knows when to stop. It will take you to the depths and then go deeper until even death is a risk worth taking.

"And all for those moments, those rare beautiful moments, when all the pain and the ghosts disappear. It will strip away all your emotions, including fear."

The film also explores the anguish suffered by the parents of drug users. In one scene, Shaun's mother, Angela, who has stood by him through his numerous failed attempts to kick his habit, re-enacts the minutes running up to her earlier suicide attempt.

Mr McGuigan, until now best known for the crime movie Gangster No 1 and an adaptation of Irvine Welsh's hallucinogenic novel The Acid House, said: "That, to me, was the essence of the film: what the drugs have done to her, not Shaun or Michelle."

The charity Turning Point, which deals with the social consequences of addiction, welcomed the film. "It sounds as if it highlights the sorts of problems many people face when they come out of prison and try to stay off drugs, and explores why drugs are attractive to them," said a spokesman. "We prefer this approach to the 'Just Say No' one, because it shows drug users as people."

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