Recovery

This movie made me cry like a infant! I've had brain injury myself and all the complications in day to day life shown in movie was so accurate!! I was blown away, I watched this just because of David Tennant. And he did deliver unbelievable character, with all the confusion. And when you have brain damage, you don't understand it yourself, you think you are totally alright! But you aren't.. Wifes difficulties I recognized very well, my spouse from that time had same questions, when this is over.. Well it never is.. To sum up: This is incredible movie about brain damage and life after the damage!! This should be shown in hospitals to all familys of brain damege patients!! Definately!!

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.

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.

When I saw this on TV I was nervous...whats if they messed it up? Millions of families like mine that live with a brain damaged man, in my case my Dad, would be let down. I watched it with my Mum and we both ended up crying, it was so accurate and captured how the family feels as well as the person having suffered the brain injury. The actors were all wonderful and I had no complaints, my Mums told me she hasn't been able to stop thinking about it. I hope this program made many people aware of what it's like living with brain damage and what it's like for the families. More programs like this should be made, I was surprised at how good it was and it's really shook me up emotionally.

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.