There is a good deal of real life in Spinal Destination. The story of its lead character, the go-getting journalist Tessa, has much in common with the story of its writer, accomplished documentarian and film director Paula Whetu Jones.
Both have media careers, both were deprived of the ability to walk by a rare autoimmune condition, both felt their legs go while taking a bath and both struggled to adjust to their new lives. Most of all, both swore they would walk again, no matter what.
“It is quite autobiographical,” Whetu Jones confirms. “The main thing about the story is the emotional rollercoaster. It’s about trying to keep your normal in a situation that’s not normal.
“And yeah, it’s been 14 years and I still think I’m going to walk.”
Although she drew on her own time in the Burwood Spinal Unit for the story, the tone came from cinema – is it dark comedy, drama, what?
“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was my go-to, because that has all of those things in it, doesn’t it? It’s not a comedy, it’s not a drama, it’s not tragedy. It’s life. It has always been my favourite film because it taps into everything that we’re afraid of. Being stuck in an environment that we can’t be our best version of ourselves and having people tell us what to do, tell us what we should think and feel – and what we are thinking, what we are feeling. Just that fear that we’ve lost all autonomy over our own selves and our minds.”
There’s a confronting scene early in the first episode – it involves poo – that is also drawn from life. It happened to John Landreth, who plays Bob, the patient who befriends Tessa [Bree Peters] while he battles his own demons. Five years ago, Landreth fell backwards at a party, broke his neck and was left tetraplegic and in need of full-time care.
“I was in the middle of the room, hanging high on a hoist and I hadn’t quite completed the job for the day,” Landreth recalls. “The funny thing is, the nurses around me – I knew them quite well by that stage – they love poo. They love the fact that you’re pooing. The fact that it wasn’t on the carpet made it a lot easier to clean up, and they were joyful that I’d actually had a big dump.
“But you’ve got no dignity whatsoever. You’ve got no control over a large part of your body, you’re hanging there, you’re shitting on the floor. That could have been played as a very dark moment. My memory of it is that I was in hysterics about the whole thing.”
Spinal Destination is Landreth’s first time on screen since his injury and he was also part of the writing team.
“It was daunting,” he acknowledges. “I still battle with body dysmorphia. Am I going to be able to do it? Will I still be as good an actor as I was before?”
In fact, he’s a standout: Landreth embodies Bob with the energy of someone who has been where the character is going. As what Whetu Jones describes as Tessa’s “sounding board” he’s blustering and melancholy; not straightforward at all.
Bob is also at the centre of an even darker scene in the first episode that Landreth somehow makes comedic. Whetu Jones says friends she’s shown the series to have been unsure about whether to laugh.
“And I’m like, ‘You can. That’s the whole point. You’re not laughing at us, you’re laughing with us, because we’re laughing, too.’”
Besides, she and Landreth agree, if this stuff played out as drama, it would be hard to watch.
The pair had not met before Spinal Destination but came together because they were pursuing similar ideas with different producers. The ideas were merged and worked into a six-part series with a Great Southern Television team that included the former Shortland Street heavyweights Kathleen Anderson as executive producer and Maxine Fleming and Gavin Strawhan as writers. The result feels like it has legs, if that’s the right word.
“There’s a story in it and I hope this is not the last one to be told,” says Landreth. “I’m hoping it’s not one of those things where TV will go, ‘Okay, we did this in 2024,’ and a decade from now they go, ‘Oh, I guess we’d better do another one on tetraplegics and paraplegics’.”
“We’re here to stay, John,” Whetu Jones responds. “We’re not going to let them off that easy.”
Spinal Destination is screening on Sky Open, from Wednesday, March 27, 8.30pm
