Depression can be a funny thing. Well, not really. In fact it can be cripplingly unfunny But like the saying goes, sometimes you have to laugh, because the only alternative is to bawl your eyes out – and if anyone can make the subject of serious, clinical depression distinctly *non-serious*, it’s Stephen Fry. So grab a box of Kleenex and get your saline eye solution ready as we have a good, therapeutic weep with STEPHEN FRY: THE SECRET LIFE OF THE MANIC DEPRESSIVE (Mon Feb 9, ABC- 9:35am).
Stephen Fry is a renowned British actor, writer and wit and arguably one of the three most prominent and recognizable gay men in the British Isles. Fry is also a remarkably funny man, with a particular talent for scathing put-downs (‘I don’t need you to remind me of my age, thank you; I have a bladder to do that for me’) that proves how perfect his casting as Oscar Wilde in the 1997 film of the same name was.
It was a great surprise therefore to find out that Fry has been battling clinical depression for most of his 51 years. And when I say ‘depression’, I don’t mean some sort of whiny, Emo-kid ‘My parents got me a Good Charlotte CD for Xmas and I wanted Sonic Youth’ depression – I mean the kind ofdeep, black, solitary confinement type abject misery that sometimes not even a crowbar can shift. Unfortunately it’s not possible, as some people interviewed during the series seem to think, to simply ‘snap out of it’ and stop being depressed. Fry quips, ‘You can’t reason yourself back into cheerfulness any more than you can reason yourself into an extra six inches in height.’
THE SECRET LIFE OF THE MANIC DEPRESSIVE is a two-part series in which Fry travels across the UK (and the US during breaks in his filming of the upcoming much cheerier series STEPHEN FRY’S AMERICA) and talks with various people- both person-in-the-street commonfolk and person-in-the-botox-waiting-room celebrity types- who, like him, have been waging a lifelong war with various aspects of Clinical Depression, Manic Depression and Bi-Polar Disorder. Rather than talk to doctors who treat the condition, Fry went straight to the source and interview other sufferers, or as he put it ‘This isn’t a program where we interview the scientists or doctors; it’s one lab rat interviewing the other lab rats.’
Fry himself suffers from Cyclothymia, a ‘milder’ form of Bipolar Disorder. In 1995, whilst he was playing the lead role in the West End play CELL MATES it lead him to undergo a nervous breakdown, flee the theatre like it was showing a production of Live Striptease with the cast of SEINFELD and go missing for several days – during which he contemplated, and thankfully rejected, suicide.
Some of the celebrities that Fry interviews for SECRET LIFE include Carrie Fisher, Robbie Williams, Richard Dreyfuss, Rick Stein and Dan Ackroyd, all of whom have some form of clinical depression. Indeed, Fry makes the point that a lot of people in the entertainment industry- particularly, and ironically, many comedians – suffer crippling depression. John Cleese has severe chronic depression, as did Spike Milligan and Benny Hill.
Fry’s documentary is at turns both touching, witty, sad and informative. The program picked up the 2007 Emmy for Best Documentary and was a nominee for the 2006 BAFTAS for Best Factual Series. In recognition of his program dispelling some of the ‘mythconceptions’ about Bipolar Disorder, Fry was awarded the 2007 BT Mind Champion of the Year.
If you, or someone you know is battling chronic depression, you must watch this series.
