THURSDAY 30 MARCH
Documentary
How to Have a Good Death
9:00pm - 10:30pm
BBC2 London & South East
VIDEO Plus+: 6721
Subtitled, Widescreen
It is perfectly possible, maintains Esther Rantzen, to have a good death - one where our final wishes are taken into account and where none of us has to receive hospital treatment we neither need nor want. In a thoughtful, interesting and surprisingly optimistic documentary, Rantzen, whose experience of bereavement is still raw after the deaths of her husband, mother and father, looks at the beginnings of a movement to change the way in which hospitals treat the dying. At one hospital this change is personified in the absolutely lovely Simon, a palliative care consultant and the kind of man you'd want on your side as you faced up to the end. He's charming, honest and not at all patronising. It's Simon's job to help Stanley, a retired bank manager with terminal cancer, make his final weeks as comfortable as possible. The film accompanies Stanley as he faces death with humour and honesty, and it's very humbling indeed.
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