Documentary
Pramface Babies Thursday 13 March
9:00pm - 10:00pm
Channel 4
I can't help feeling the title of this must have been foisted on the director. Its sneering tone (why not Chavs in Labour or Slapper Ward?) is at odds with the film itself, a sober, unflinching look at four young girls in Liverpool Women's Hospital as their unplanned pregnancies come to term. When we first meet Laura, she is in labour, trying to call her baby's father Terry by mobile phone in between deep gasps of gas-and-air. Terry's a real charmer; we never actually meet him but his presence, or lack of it, hovers over Laura's life. Seven months later her only companion as she cares for their baby is a bulldog Terry gave her for Christmas ("Sit, Gucci, sit!") The other young mums in the film, Linzi, Kerry and Krista, seem to fare better and have an optimism about the future that you pray won't be dented too soon. It would have been good to spend more time following their fortunes as parents, but most of the film happens in the hospital itself, with long scenes of labour and birth that are painful to watch (though, OK, less painful than they would have been to live through). It adds up to a stark, non-judgemental slice of life.
RT reviewer - David Butcher
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Subtitled