Kiri, Channel4, Wed 10th Jan

[southeastdweller]

Anyone else looking forward to this? The writer also wrote the recent Robbie Coltrane drama, National Treasure, and Sarah Lancashire is always superb.

www.radiotimes.com/news/tv/2017-10-31/kiri-channel-4-trailer/

I don’t think it had crossed SL’s mind for a second that Kiri’s dad might turn up. The visit had been approved. It was the grandparents who contacted their son - they were obviously quite sympathetic to his and Kiri’s plight. Even so they weren’t expecting him to leave the house with her. If he had stayed at the house she would have come to no harm. Should SL have foreseen this course of events? It was the grandparents who broke the terms of the arrangement and the father who abused their trust by taking Kiri out of the house. Italian I think you have a very interesting perspective and make some very good points. I also think that as this is a drama the culprit won’t be who we expect and so may well be the foster mum. I think the social workers (in this case SL) lose whatever the outcome - for arranging the visit in the first place and for placing Kiri with unsuitable foster parents if they turn out to be responsible. Not a great advert for either role so interesting to hear from someone who has real life experience of these things.

@roundaboutthetown you have not really answered my question as to why foster mum is in the frame in do many people's minds. She's off work with something like anxiety. A lot of people get this and don't kill their child.

And *..she was unhealthily obsessed with having another child" I find that idea really offensive.

I've met a lot of women desperate to have a child or another child. To have this natural desire classed as unhealthy is really horrible.many people foster and adopt and thank goodness they do.

Whatever reason people have for another child, as a sibling for a current child or because they want another child, is no one's business as long as they will love and care for all the children.

How could you know if her drinking had effected her judgment? I don't know if it did or not!

I just find it quite astounding the foster mum is so disliked on this thread. You can do a lot of bad things but be a mum and care, that's the worst!

I don't think the foster mum did it, though, italiangreyhound - neurotic people don't tend to murder others and then go on the national news instead of crumbling and confessing. So sorry if I did not answer your question - you should have made it more clear that's what your question was, given that I did not say I think the foster mother did it! And the way she says she wanted to adopt her ds irritates me, because it is plainly more a need she feels than he does!! She therefore comes across as being in denial. Why you are therefore concluding I think all adopters and foster parents are neurotic like her, I do not know - stop extrapolating from people's opinions of one clearly neurotic woman to all women, all mothers, all foster mothers and all adopters, that's just a ridiculous thing to do.

My reason for thinking it may be the ds who did it is because I think for a drama it's a neat way of pointing out that being a parent is hard. Just as the grandad's son did bad things, he is not 100% monster; the grandad made lots of mistakes with his parenting and grandparenting, but he did not mean to cause deliberate harm or disruption to his son after his wife died - in his own grief, he could not be there for his son in the way he was needed at the time. The fact that the foster mother is neurotic is not her fault, but her state of mind impacts on her family. It's not her fault if her ds is actually the sort of personality to be affected to the extent that he might want to hurt his foster sister, but that does not mean her relationship with her ds is not a factor. So in other words, she and the grandfather are not so very different, except she is throwing around accusations in her grief in a very destructive and unhelpful way.

And we don't know enough about her drip of a dh to comment much on him, except to say he seems a bit apathetic so far.

@roundaboutthetown I'm sorry I am losing track! I think my question was why is she in the frame for some but also Why is she so disliked on this thread?

OK, I've found it I said "@roundaboutthetown how is she over possessive? Can you imagine what it is like to look after a child for 5 years but to have no legal rights as her parent?"

Sorry, I had lost track. And I think in a way what I can't understand is why she is so disliked.

I don't think she is neurotic and I can't see why you think she is.

I don't think you think all adopters or foster carers are bad or anything but maybe the characters experiences of fertility issues, fostering and trying to adopt have made her the way she is. And you seemed a bit scathing of her as a character. But I am sorry for getting mixed up and thinking you thought she had done it. I was confused!

You don't need to keep trying to answer my question because I think probably we are just looking at this from different perspectives. Which is fine.

I found the FM a bit detached really. But don't ask me to justify it, it is just an overall impression I got.

@roundaboutthetown don't take my comments personally. Maybe I just feel a bit sensitive!

@UnderTheNameOfSanders yes. I understand. I felt she came off as a bit unusual but so much of it was after Kiri disappeared.

A weird bit for me was when the Grandad went to a crack den looking for his son, & it was grim, & the disabled druggy man had a little girl with him in the kitchen - quite shocking??Surely any decent person would report that to get the child out of there, anonymously if necessary? Why was that bit in? 🤔🤔

@Gettingstuffdonehere "Why was that bit in?" maybe to show the circumstances under which Kiri was taken into care.

Matthew Fraser was the druggy with the little girl. Sure it was him..

Italiangreyhound - I can imagine it is horribly frustrating to look after a child for five years, love it and have no rights in relation to it. If this scenario is a bit more personal to you than me, then of course you will feel more sympathetic to the foster mum . However, I don't think that justifies throwing accusations around at everyone else involved, as though she was the only one who cared and the only one in the right and the only one who should have had any rights. That's why she comes across to me as possessive. Like it or not, Kiri had a background and blood relatives who wanted to retain some contact and she had not yet been adopted, either. Why should she be denied contact with her grandfather? What reason did SL have to believe he was going to let his son take her off on his own and that she would end up dead? That was hardly foreseeable. It is unfair to go out of your way on national TV to pillory a social worker who appears just to have been doing her job as best she could. Anyway, as you say, we are just looking at this from different perspectives - as were SL and the foster mum, because one had a deep emotional attachment to Kiri and the other had a professional responsibility. I have no doubt if these were real people and I knew all of the foster mother's background history I would be more sympathetic, but from the little that has been revealed on TV, she has come across as fragile, a bit self-centred and needy and not in a good place, and now inclined to lash out and blame the world for her problems, hence being an unsympathetic character in this drama, because she is making no effort whatsoever to see this from anyone's perspective but her own and not enough of the cause of her apparently poor mental health is revealed in the drama to sympathise with. Still, we are only two episodes in, so we may discover more about her that makes her more rounded and a more sympathetic character!

@roundaboutthetown very good answer from you.

I really am sorry if I have come across heavy handed! Our son was adopted and became legally ours within about 6 months so I also do not know what it is like to love and care for a child who is not legally mine.

Maybe I am just easily rattled but I am sorry for coming across that way.

You haven't come across as heavy handed at all, Italian - just defending your corner!

And I'm sorry for rattling you. I didn't mean to! x

There's been some brilliant analysis of different characters on this thread, which is a sign of great writing. The only character I find incomprehensible, although likeable,is Sarah Lancashire's. She's all over the place and doesn't seem that bothered about Kiri apart from how the matter will affect her professionally.

She is more interested in the dog!

She's the only character I think is badly written.

Yes, the social worker is strangely written. She fell apart and started drinking heavily instantaneously. She seems lonely, has multiple issues of her own, has a difficult relationship with her own mother and is very cynical about the way the system works, to the point of bitterness. I wonder if that's just so she can be ripped to pieces by the press and have all her secrets exposed for national humiliation.

I think SL's character is intended to show that social workers are only human. They are ordinary people doing a difficult and unglamorous job. When she is punched in the street she takes it in her her stride because she used to making herself unpopular among the kind of people who might lash out. She is not a paragon with divine insight who can be guaranteed to always make the right call - all she can do is follow procedure and use her own judgement as best she can. She has stuck at a difficult job, seen a lot of life in that job (and the worst of it), has her own problems and issues going on. She's not someone I particularly warm to, but I get the impression that through her long years of experience she knows what she is talking about. This is what she does every day - day in and day out. I'm not surprised she drinks.

I'm not surprised, either - I think being a social worker is about as thankless as it gets in terms of careers. It's the least respected caring profession, with pretty much every level of society seeming to find a reason to take a pop at it. You get people waxing lyrical about the role of nurses, doctors, teachers, carers, but nobody eulogises about social workers. We only ever hear about social workers when something goes wrong. Whilst the other careers are subject to unrealistic expectations they are at least universally accepted as a good thing. People tend to be a lot more ambivalent about the role of social workers - happy to say they ruin people's lives when things go wrong, but not willing to acknowledge they are being anything more than interfering do-gooders when they are getting things right.

Here's my theory. We'll find out that Kiri has been a very difficult child to parent. She probably has an attachment disorder due to the neglect she suffered as a young child. (it would be a miracle if she didn't actually).

The FM's illness is depression/stress resulting from the situation. Kiri mainly hits out at her, the primary care giver and she gets the brunt of the bad behaviour.

The FS is fed up with his nice only child life having been turned upside down by Kiri and is now resentful of his parents and secretly relieved that Kiri is gone but obviously feeling very guilty about that.

FD is worn out trying to keep everyone together. He thinks when they actually adopt Kiri that her behaviour will improve as she feels more secure in her forever home.

SL referring to Kiri as a stupid girl makes sense. she has probably run away loads of time and caused everyone masses of grief and worry.

As to who killed her though I've no idea. Probably the FM. She followed dad and Kiri and when the dad lost Kiri she found her and tried to get her to come with her and there was a struggle. Accidental strangling with the yellow scarf.