Recovery

David Tennant and Sarah Parish's brilliant acting had me in tears as many of the scenes were so familiar to me. My husband suffered a sub-arachnoid haemorrhage in 1977 and required a major operation which involved lifting his brain and plugging the leak. Like Tricia I was naive enough to expect that he would return to being his former self. After over 25 years of loving and caring for him he abandoned me without warning to go and live with a woman he hardly knew. He then petitioned for and I am now going through a divorce. I do hope the programme helped people to understand what it is like to cope with brain injury.

This movie had a fantastic message and cast, they didn't make it sappy or had 2 dimensional characters. They were real people, feeling real things. Coping with a life changing accident or illness doesn't make them only a victim, they are still people.

Just because the family expresses discomfort and refuse to be saintly doesn't mean they are not loving or trying.

Not easy watch but what a watch.

I absolutely loved David Tennant, Sarah Parish & Harry Treadway

I absolutely loved that Sarah's character, didn't want to be carer or mother and stubbornly wanted her partner back.

Because most of the time that's what we slip too don't we.

But seriously absolutely fantastic movie.

This is one of those films that you can't stop thinking about days after watching. It doesn't seem like much right after you've finished it, but it keeps nagging at you. The subject matter is handled extremely well- it's blunt, but not degrading, sympathetic, but not unrealistic. It's a shame that this was a tv movie; I think it would have gained some attention if it had been released in theaters. All of the actors were brilliant. Recovery feels very, very real, and I highly recommend checking it out.

This movie is the most powerful, emotional, and inspiring movie I have ever seen. The description of brain damage like a road network is brilliant. This is a heartfelt, and definitely heartBREAKING, tale of the struggle of man who no longer understands his own brain. Everything is difficult, people are mad at him for something he doesn't remember doing, even though it just happened yesterday. Themes are: confusion, frustration, anger, fear, hopelessness and love. David Tennant expresses the stress and rejection Alan experiences, beautifully. He is angry, sobbing, sullen to the point of laying in bed wishing to turn off his whole brain. The ending is complex, and designed to be judged differently, depending on your viewpoint. Personally, I find it sweet.

Recovery is a well-judged and balanced drama of a sensitive subject that doesn't sentimentalise the main characters. David Tennant and Sarah Parish bring to the fore the complex and conflicting emotions of a couple deeply in love struggling to come to terms with the personality changes they both endure and also must make to survive a tragic accident.

Tennant, as Alan, brings humour as well as a dangerous lecherousness, as an engineer recovering from a memory loss brought on by a road accident. Alan is not portrayed simply as a victim but as human being with feelings doing the best he can to make sense of his new life. Sarah Parish's Tricia is not a clichéd stand-by-her-man housewife who will do anything to support her husband. She struggles with falling out of love with Alan, as the man she once new and loved is now a completely different person - a stranger to her.

Contrary to some opinion, this - in my view - makes perfect Sunday night viewing. Too often, we are shown soft family dramas or detective series, like Heartbeat, which rot and putrefy the brain. Programme commissioners seem to think that the traditional day of rest is also a day when our minds go to sleep. More challenging and thought-provoking drama like Recovery would seriously change the situation.