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The real thing

Ben Rich | 17:03 UK time, Tuesday, 16 May 2006

In these days of tight budgets and efficiencies, an offer of something-for-nothing is always welcome.

sixoclocknews.gifAnd when that something-for-nothing turns out to be expensively researched and beautifully shot documentary material whose broadcast might just stop a mother having her fourth child forcibly adopted because of a medical mistake, well it would be churlish to say no.

John Sweeney's moving story of the mother whose first three children were taken away after she was thought to have abused one of them had it all - powerful testimony from the parents, a medical whodunnit around the issue of whether she suffered from (and could have passed on) a genetic predisposition to brittle bones which could explain suspicious fractures, and the gripping drama of whether her not-yet-born fourth child would be taken away as well.

It also had a raft of legal problems related to cases in the notoriously secret Family Courts, a mind boggling chain of scientific reasoning that made me realise why it had being done as a half hour documentary in the first place, and precious little in the way of detailed response from social services or the doctors involved.

So John's original script for the Six would have amounted to probably seven minutes and made perfect sense. We then cut it back until it was about two minutes and you couldn't understand a word of it. Eventually John and producer Vicky Ridell cut a powerful piece at just under three minutes that satisfied John, her, and most importantly, the lawyers. A great piece for the Six, and hopefully a bigger audience for the real thing on .

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