Mental health: Introducing a bi-polar storyline into a popular drama

River City is an hour long, weekly pre-watershed drama from BBC Scotland, airing on Tuesdays on BBC One. The series prides itself on tackling issues that are relevant to its viewers. In recent times there has been a long running historical abuse story, an abortion story, and another about human trafficking.

In wanting to have a character living with mental health issues, we hoped to reflect the lives of many people who watch the show. Pete Galloway, played by Andy Gray, is a central character in River City and popular with the audience. It was important to use a long-running character because we didn’t want to tell a story with an obvious ending; we wanted the character to continue to deal with their condition. The other main character involved in this story is Caitlin McLean, Pete’s partner, played by Gayle Telfer Stevens. We also wanted to have a long-running character who is affected by the mental health issues of a loved one.

After we decided to make Pete bi-polar, we took on an enormous amount of research. We contacted Bipolar Scotland and other bodies who introduced us to people living with the condition and were willing to talk to us about it. We had access to medical professionals too, including Dr Danny Smith, a mental health specialist.

Andy Gray had several meetings with people suffering from the condition. This proved to be an enormous help in portraying the character. We sent numerous storylines and then drafts of scripts to the medical professionals and people who live with the illness. Their many valuable insights on several occasions changed the direction of the stories. 

In the series, Pete is hospitalised and meets another patient, Mikey, played by Ron Donachie, who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia. This mini-arc allowed Pete to see his own illness through someone else’s eyes. We then had to do the same kind of research into Mikey’s illness.

We had a big reaction to this initial story, with many people on the programme’s social media site talking about how they could relate to the character’s journey and how in many cases they were affected by similar issues in their own lives.

As programme makers, we wanted to engage further with the audience and so we had a Facebook Live event with Andy Gray, Dr Danny Smith and myself, as one of the producers. There were interesting queries about Andy’s performance and how he portrayed the character. There was also interest in how the writers had captured the subject matter and complex questions to Dr Smith about perceptions of the illness and the reality of living with it.

We did a further arc of mini-episodes for our social media page with Pete and Caitlin which also had a high degree of involvement from the audience. Andy Gray has been asked to be a patron of a bipolar charity group in Scotland. And on River City, Pete will continue to live with his condition.

Mental health resources for BBC staff from the BBC Academy

Sian Williams on reporting mental health stories