Best Interests, BBC

Jack Thorne is back writing TV and this time he tackled a theme and a cause close to his heart: disability.

Best Interests tells the heart wrenching story of a family torn apart in the last days of their daughters life. Marney (Niamh Moriarty) has muscular dystrophy. Her terminal condition has rendered her sister Katie (Alison Oliver) invisible her whole life and, eventually, it will turn husband and wife Nicci (Sharon Horgan) and Andrew (Michael Sheen) against each other.

Within this moral quagmire of a series, where the doctors, the family and the courts disagree over whether to keep Marnie alive, the NHS come out firmly on top. Doctors in this series are presented as human, but heroes nonetheless. Consultant, Samantha (Noma Dumezweni) has done all she can to care for Marney throughout her entire life, she sees ending it as an end to her suffering, as a mercy.

Sharon Horgan’s Nicci goes on an entirely different journey. By the end of the series, her desperation and love for her daughter turns her into a villain. She uses money from a pro-life Christian charity to fight to keep Marney alive in the courts. She clings to testimony from a questionable American doctor and throws her husband Andrew under the bus in an attempt to keep Marnie alive. Her trajectory in particular asks the audience to reflect on the impossible choices parents have to make when their children die before them.

Best Interests is a programme that talks to us about the gravity of terminal illness in children - the sadness, the hopelessness and the unexpected joy. The show has the ability to make you laugh, cry and teach you that every moment with the ones you love is a gift.