Why family is at the heart of The A Word

The Hughes family in new BBC One drama The A Word has all the love and humour of a family you'd want to be raised in. But this seemingly-perfect unit is challenged like never before when its youngest member, Joe, is diagnosed with autism.

Playing mum to Joe in the drama written by Peter Bowker is actress Morven Christie, who found herself as overwhelmed with love for this family as her own character, Alison.

My character, Alison, is quite a bullish person. She doesn’t really receive any piece of information without resisting at first. And she goes at everything full pelt. So when she gets the diagnosis that her son, Joe, is on the autism spectrum she just says to herself: “Right, this road has now opened up, this is the direction” and she just goes down that path. 

She absolutely dotes on her son. She wants to make the world easier to negotiate and just make life a safer place for him to be in. But she doesn’t necessarily go about things in the right way. She doesn’t know what the right way is, but she’s also not afraid of upsetting people on the route. She’s single-minded.

Alison and her husband Paul have different ways of dealing with it. It causes quite a wedge in the marriage and relationship. Alison’s primary characteristic is that she’s forthright: she’ll go after things. She’s very much like her father. Her dad Maurice, played by Christopher Eccleston, is very much: “I will do things my way, I’ve got the best idea”. But Paul’s thing is: “Oh it will be fine, just leave him be, let him get on with it”. 

But these are two people who love each other immensely. Their reactions to this bombshell are very different and that does cause problems between them. The realisations are coming on them like slaps in the face. But ultimately they’re both coming from the same place which is loving Joe and wanting to make everything OK for him.

And I still have hope for them! They are written as a couple that has, from the outside, the perfect marriage. They laugh with each other, they’re sexy with each other, they have fun with each other, they can fight without it really mattering too much. But this does expose the fault lines, essentially. 

The whole family becomes involved and I think Alison is quite resentful of that. I don’t think she appreciates having the opinions of others. It’s quite an instinctive, mothering thing. That this is my young, this is my journey, this is mine to protect. But it does take that whole village to raise that child doesn’t it? And so ultimately this family needs to find a way to function, but they just can’t agree on it and that’s the problem.

I felt massively protective over Max Vento, who plays Joe. As the series develops, Max and I have a lot of scenes together, so it was often just the two of us. It was sometimes really tough, but he was my little buddy. It was lovely when I got here this morning and our publicist said: “Max really misses you” and I was like: “I miss him too!” And I really do.

But Joe is no more indicative of a child with autism than I am indicative of every female. If I’ve learned anything it’s that to meet one child on the spectrum means you’ve met one child – because they are so different to one another. 

Morven Christie plays Alison Hughes in The A Word.

The A Word starts on Tuesday, 22 March at 9pm on BBC One. Each episode will be available to watch in BBC iPlayer for 30 days after broadcast.

Comments made by writers on the BBC TV blog are their own opinions and not necessarily those of the BBC.