Father, son and the state of the nation: representing dementia in Our friends in the north (1996)

Collins, Jeremy

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Collins, Jeremy (2026) Father, son and the state of the nation: representing dementia in Our friends in the north (1996). In: Dementia in film, media and culture: towards ethically responsible discourse. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh. (In Press)

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Abstract

This paper will offer a critical reading of a specific representation of dementia within the BBC’s celebrated drama Our Friends in the North (1996). The series covers a period of social change between 1964 and 1995 with each of nine hour-long episodes set in a particular year, and the personal lives of four main characters are played out against this political backdrop.
Although OFITN follows the lives of the four friends between Newcastle and London, arguably the central protagonist is Nicky Hutchinson (played by Christopher Eccleston), whose story arc moves from teenage optimism through political extremism to disillusion and then a kind of acceptance. Nicky’s father Felix (Peter Vaughn) is a veteran of the Jarrow march, and the relationship between father and son is framed within the political and social changes between the 1960s and the 1990s, particularly in terms of the promises and betrayals of the Labour Party and left-politics more broadly. In the later episodes, Felix develops Alzheimer’s disease, and it is through this development that their complex relationship is explored. Issues of political failure (in terms of Felix’s experiences in the Jarrow march, Nicky’s unsuccessful attempt to become a Labour MP, and the Miner’s Strike) intertwine with personal conflicts between the two, and this paper will consider the ways in which these themes are explored in the context of Felix’s dementia.
A key aspect of this reading is the extent to which Alzheimer’s disease becomes a narrative device to allow the relationship to change and evolve, and whether this can be seen as narrowing the opportunity for a more ‘progressive’, non-stigmatising representation focusing on Felix’s understanding of his condition.
A further set of concerns around memory (and memory loss) will be addressed in considering how socio-cultural political memory is interlaced with personal memory, and how this father-son relationship might be understood as representing Alzheimer’s as a ‘gendered affliction’ (Hartung et al., 2022: 3).
References:
Hartung H, Synnes O, Falcus S, et al. (2022) Ageing Masculinities, Alzheimer’s and Dementia Narratives. London: Bloomsbury.

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