The best of the rest on TV: How we live now
You should ‘live better’, we are told. Look after yourself, keep an eye on your finances, your chi, your diet, all that – and it’ll be alright. But perhaps one of the reasons we’re feeling the need to check in so frequently and perhaps ask for help with finances, chi etcetera is that for many every belt has been tightened, every corner cut, and still what is left doesn’t stretch far enough.
BBC3’s striking factual drama Killed By My Debt airs on full terrestrial channel BBC1 this week, following the true story of Jerome Rogers, a 19 year-old courier from Croydon, whose two unpaid £65 traffic fines escalate to over a thousand pounds. Crippled by the pressure of debt, and with no way of earning the money to pay it back with his bike clamped, Jermone took his own life.
Zero hours contracts and a job-to-job pay cheque are a tightrope balancing act
The hard hitting film was made in close consultation with Jerome’s family, chronicling his transformation from a happy and hopeful young man to genuine despair in the face of the gig economy so many live in currently. Zero hours contracts and a job-to-job pay cheque are a tightrope balancing act vulnerable to fair weather employment. With so much at risk, hopefully Killed By My Debt will be a contributing factor to some employment law re-evaluation.
Live Well For Longer also casts an eye over changing the way in which we exist, with the new series hoping for change on a more individual level. Presenters Kate Quilton and Tamal Ray are joined by reporter Morland Sanders to take a look at contemporary health topics affecting many. The series kicks off examining sex, drugs and alcohol, with an investigation into a male contraception at the University of Wolverhampton and a supposed hangover-free version of alcohol called alcosynth. It also questions whether the time has come to lift the ban on medical marijuana. Looking for solutions – that’s what we like to hear! Right alongside not ignoring the problems.
Live Well For Longer; Wednesday, Channel 4, 8pm
Killed By My Debt; Wednesday, BBC1, 9pm
