Recovery
BBC1, 9pm

 FIRST things first: if you watched Recovery, I'm sure you'll be feeling inspired to make a donation to Headway, the charity that tries to help all those affected by brain injury, and which was also the organisation that assisted Recovery's author, Tony Marchant, in his factual research for the drama.

You can make your donation easily and near-instantly on-line at headway.org.uk. Just don't make the error of typing a pounds-sterling sign into the on-screen box that appears asking you to specify the amount you want to give; simply enter the amount in numerals.

If you do enter a pound sign, as I did to begin with, you'll find yourself going round in cyber-circles. Otherwise, you can send a cheque to Headway at 4 King Edward Court, King Edward Street, Nottingham, NG1 1EW.

If you didn't watch Recovery, you can still donate to Headway. You just won't know that the play was one of TV's saddest, most harrowing dramas ever - and one that should, if there's any justice, produce bucketloads of awards for its two stars: wur ain former Doctor Who, David Tennant, and Sarah Parish.

Jolly entertainment, Recovery wasn't; heart-breakingly educative, it was.

With deft thespian rigour, David T and Sarah P portrayed your average happily-married couple, Alan and Tricia, whose affectionate routine was destroyed when Alan suffered a brain injury in a car accident.

In an instant, Alan became a ghastly stranger to those who loved him most. Brain injury, you see, plays the cruel trick of leaving folk looking like their former selves, while transforming them into spookily childlike amnesiacs incapable of putting their clothes on or making a piece of toast without burning the kitchen down, and who are at the same time terribly prone to uttering sexually uninhibited comments to casual passers-by. "What was going through your mind?" Tricia asked Alan with horror after another casual occurrence of such an outrage. "Everything that came out of my mouth," Alan replied matter-of-factly.

Shortly after that, Alan sought, with a kind of unknowing adolescent directness, to re-establish sexual relations with his wife. Poor Tricia ended up in tears.

Most of Recovery's audience must have been weeping, too, at this point. Brain injury: it's most brutal and dehumanising for those who have to try to deal with it at close-hand, in the home, 24/7.

Alan's condition also made him embarrass and frighten his two sons by, among other things, making him give vent to senseless outbursts of rage, inappropriate giggling and unseemly public nakedness. Additionally, Alan's helpless state compelled Tricia, his wife, to give up being his wife and become a ragged-at-the-edges, despairing version of his mum. In this tragic, unending and near-superhuman day-to-day task, Tricia was given precious little practical help by the health care industry. When Alan was discharged from hospital, all Tricia received was a consultant's bland assurance that if she loved her husband then, by golly, she'd be unable to stop herself making him better.

However, as the blameless Tricia later pointed out to the same consultant shortly before fleeing from her husband: "You saved his life, but it's not worth living. You take them home, and all you see is the death of everything. He can't get better because he doesn't know there's anything wrong with him."

Given the factual input that Tony Marchant received from Headway, Recovery seemed to imply that this hands-off medical non-intervention is all too common a mode of treatment. Likewise, Alan's one visit to a day-care and rehabilitation unit confronted us with a vision of nineteenth-century mental health provision, ie Bedlam.

So show a bit of compassion in the easiest way possible, please. Your cash to Headway can make a difference.