Alzheimer's Documentary

Living With Alzheimer’s airs early February

21 January 2009 (20:13) Comment!

The official airing dates for the TV documentary Living With Alzheimer’s have been finalized. Part 1 will air on BBC2 on Wednesday, February 4 at 21:00 GMT, and Part 2 will air exactly a week later on Wednesday, February 11 at 21:00 GMT.

Both parts of the documentary, which follows Terry Pratchett for the better part of 2008 as he deals with his Alzheimer’s diagnosis, are an hour long.

The documentary is produced by IWC Media and BBC2, and will air as part of a documentary series about mental health and mental health related issues.

Retro News: Pratchett’s fan updates October-December 2008; health “stable”; documentary “looks pretty good”; Unseen Academicals finished by May?

1 January 2009 (15:02) Comment!

Since October, Terry Pratchett has posted three updates on PJSMPrints, all of which contain a wealth of information about his writing progress, the media interest in Terry Pratchett The Alzheimer’s Patient, the documentary Living With Alzheimer’s, and so on.

To quote Pratchett’s October update (scroll down at the link):

At last some progress is being made on Unseen Academicals since we got through the making of the BBC2 documentary and all the alternative calls on my time that seemed to have filled the past year. Today, for example, I have nothing to do but write and Rob and I were just mentioning how odd it is to have a day which does not involve some kind of travel, meeting, or interview. In fact Rob is about to interview me right now:

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Living With Alzheimer’s to air in February?

1 January 2009 (14:28) Comment!

Despite our previous report that Living With Alzheimer’s would air in January, Sandra Kidby of PJSMPrints announced that the documentary time slot is “almost certainly going to be Wednesday 4th February at 9 p.m., with part two following a week later.”

The documentary consists of two hour-long parts, and follows Terry Pratchett as he learns about the disease and deals with the “embuggerance.”

Living With Alzheimer’s is produced by IWC Media and BBC2, and will air as part of a documentary series about mental health and mental health related issues.

Living With Alzheimer’s to air in January; more information about Alzheimer’s documentary

28 December 2008 (20:15) Comment!

After hearing about the Alzheimer’s documentary (full title Terry Pratchett: Living With Alzheimer’s) off-and-on for almost a year, MedicalNewsToday.com has lots of information as to when the documentary will be aired and what it will contain.

The IWC Media-produced documentary will be aired in January on BBC Two, UK, as part of a documentary series focused on mental health called BBC Headroom.
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Retro News: Pratchett interview, in which he actually talks about things other than Alzheimer’s (29 November 2008)

28 December 2008 (19:57) Comment!

Deborah Orr at the Independent.co.uk interviewed Terry Pratchett late in November, and in doing so provides some insight into Terry Pratchett’s writing process.

The article gets the requisite Alzheimer’s questions done early. Terry Pratchett summed up the effect of his very public diagnosis:
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From Terry Pratchett: Alzheimer’s, documentary, book, and film news.

19 April 2008 (14:13) 1 Comment

Over at the Discworld illustrator’s website, Terry Pratchett has kindly updated his fans with information about everything: the BBC documentary (”broadcast next year”), dealing with Alzheimer’s (”I am now firmly ensconced with a specialist”), Nation (”line-edited”), and the coming TV adaptation of Going Postal. The full text of the letter follows:

My office is now effectively at a standstill. In fact, my office is probably moving slightly backwards. It has not helped that a five story rack of filed mail collapsed under the weight recently, thus shuffling several thousand documents into new and interesting combinations. Right now it is a good day if we can answer just those emails that turn up on that day. Most days are nothing like good days. Can we please say this:

I very much appreciate all the letters, emails and cards that have come in, many of them recounting personal experiences and quite a few passing on “survival kits”. There does seem to be some people out there who have managed at least to slow AD, although I have to say that it does appear by taking various supplements, not by milligram, but by grams :o)

Nation has now been line-edited, and in theory I was going to have a month or so off, although a large part of that will now be spent reassembling what passes as our post room. In reality there are now more calls on my time than there have ever been, to the point where we are simply having to ignore approaches. I think we must have had more than a dozen approaches from documentary companies alone, and I think we shall now just stop sending out the “You are too late, guys” emails (You may see us around and about being followed by Craig and Charlie, who are making a documentary about me for the BBC which will be broadcast next year.) I never intended that I would be some kind of AD spokesman, but the world seems to be deciding otherwise.

On a brighter note, I am now firmly ensconced with a specialist, testing last week showed that nothing much had moved since the end of November, except that in situations where I must parallel process I find that serial processing is about as much as I can achieve :o)

There are a number of things planned for the rest of the year, and they include cracking on with Unseen Academicals and also, with any luck, playing a rather larger role in the making of Going Postal.

Terry Pratchett/Alzheimer’s documentary by IWC Media and the BBC

18 April 2008 (15:18) 1 Comment

Scotland’s largest independent television production company, IWC Media, has teamed up with Terry Pratchett and the BBC to make a new documentary series about Terry Pratchett and his diagnosis of early onset Alzheimer’s. Craig Hunter will be the producer for the documentary, and Charlie Russell will direct. Terry Pratchett has said on his illustrator’s website that he “must have had more than a dozen approaches from documentary companies alone, and I think we shall now just stop sending out the “You are too late, guys” emails (You may see us around and about being followed by Craig and Charlie, who are making a documentary about me for the BBC which will be broadcast next year.) I never intended that I would be some kind of AD spokesman, but the world seems to be deciding otherwise.”