BBC drama asks: When do you let a sick child die?

How bash you determine erstwhile to halt treating a sick child, knowing that it volition extremity the child's life?

For Bafta-winning writer Jack Thorne, that's the cardinal question successful his latest TV show.

In the four-part BBC One series, Best Interests, parents Nicci and Andrew (played by Sharon Horgan and Michael Sheen) face doctors who accidental it's successful the champion interests of their disabled kid Marnie (played by Niamh Moriarty) to crook disconnected her ventilator, allowing her to die.

"I wanted to archer this play with complexity," Thorne says, explaining helium tried to amusement the views from each sides of the statement - disabled radical to parents and doctors - without "moralising".

"I anticipation I managed to steer a way done it," helium adds.

Thorne, known for penning the signifier play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, the TV movie Help and the TV bid His Dark Materials, says becoming a begetter 3 years agone brought the cardinal question successful the bid location "hugely".

"I don't deliberation I could person written this without being a parent," helium says, describing the "fierce love" that comes with being a father.

But helium says helium has besides travel to recognize the imaginable divisions that tin originate betwixt parents.

In the series, Marnie's parents are divided connected whether to hold with doctors to halt her treatment, mounting up a ineligible conflict that sees them instrumentality opposing sides.

"Being a genitor with idiosyncratic is simply a very, very, terrible benignant of intimacy," Thorne says. "You're perpetually negotiating.

"That question of who has the child's champion interests, and however you tin determine what the child's champion interests are, hopefully that permeates the full show."

In England and Wales the conception of parental work is acceptable retired successful the Children Act 1989, giving parents the work broadly to determine what happens to their child, including the close to consent to aesculapian treatment. But this close is not absolute.

If a nationalist assemblage considers that a parents' choices are not successful the champion interests of their child, and an statement cannot beryllium reached, it tin situation these choices by going to court.

A typical is appointed for the kid - abstracted from their parents and doctors - and a justice makes the last decision, based connected the grounds available.

The Department of Health and Social Care has commissioned an autarkic reappraisal of the disagreements that tin originate betwixt families and healthcare teams successful the attraction of critically sick children successful England. It is owed to beryllium completed by October 2023.

Best Interests besides touches connected the wellness inequalities successful nine experienced by disabled radical - and what Thorne refers to arsenic the "scars" caused by the pandemic.

He says friends of his were told they wouldn't get attraction during the pandemic due to the fact that they were excessively ill.

"It's erstwhile we're successful situation that we amusement our existent selves, and I deliberation our nine showed itself to beryllium dangerously ableist."

Ableism is defined arsenic favoritism that favours non-disabled radical supra disabled people.

Thorne adds: "I anticipation it's wide from the play that I consciousness similar the attraction of disabled people, peculiarly done the pandemic, was incorrect and inhumane astatine times.

"But I besides don't privation to castigate NHS doctors and nurses who are each moving hard oregon who person their beliefs."

In Best Interests, Thorne says helium was besides keen to see scenes of laughter, emotion and adjacent sex.

"That, successful my opinion, is however these things work," helium says. "When you're going done a tragic experience, it tin beryllium funny, it tin beryllium silly, it tin beryllium each these antithetic things.

"Humanity pokes up successful each sorts of weird places."

Speaking astatine the MacTaggart Lecture astatine the Edinburgh TV Festival successful 2021, Thorne talked astir having cholinergic urticaria, a information that caused him to beryllium allergic to artificial vigor and movement, leaving him with welts and successful pain.

When helium was 20, helium spent six months successful furniture and helium says his beingness was precise restricted for 10 years.

In the speech, helium was besides harshly captious of the TV industry, saying it had "utterly and totally" failed disabled people.

But Thorne says things person "moved connected markedly" since helium gave the speech.

"I'm precise excited that disabled radical are starting to determination into enactment positions."

Thorne is besides getting utilized to beingness aft a caller autism diagnosis, thing that came astir aft an quality connected vigor programme Desert Island Discs, erstwhile a listener wrote to his cause suggesting helium mightiness beryllium autistic.

The diagnosis made a batch of sense, helium says. "I deliberation it's been a positive."

Looking back, Thorne says being autistic helped with his penning vocation - and helium says penning is inactive the 1 happening that helium finds calming supra each else.

"That has been my redeeming grace truly done my life, the quality to beryllium capable to constitute and find comfortableness successful creating situations wherever I tin recognize [things] better.

"I conscionable find penning precise soothing."

Watch Best Interests connected BBC One and BBC iPlayer from 21:00 BST, Monday 12 June

BBC images courtesy: Chapter One/Mark Johnson /Kevin Baker