DISABLED people are being underrepresented in many of Britain’s most popular television shows, according to new research done by watchTVabroad.com.
Top-rated shows like Eastenders, Coronation Street, and Killing Eve reflect the variety of the UK in terms of colour, gender, and sexual orientation, but they sadly fall far short when it comes to the representation of disabled characters, says the study report.
They examined the primary casts of 10 of the most watched programmes on terrestrial networks to see how accurately they represented British society as part of their Diversity in UK TV research.
These comprised comedies, dramas, and soap operas with specially developed characters.
Shows chosen for the study were Eastenders, Coronation Street, All Creatures Great and Small, Killing Eve, Line of Duty, Vigil, Gavin and Stacey, Peaky Blinders, Derry Girls, and Mrs Brown’s Boys.
Only Coronation Street has more than one impaired character among the 10 evaluated programmes, with six without any.
Compared to 21.7 per cent of the UK population, just 1.6 per cent of characters had a disability on average.
In contrast, the casts of the plays showed a far wider range of sexual orientations and racial backgrounds.
Carolina Beltramo, TV analyst at watchTVAbroad.com commented: “While UK TV shows have improved the representation of minorities on our screens, this research shows a glaring diversity gap around the portrayal of disabled people.
“As great strides have been made on sexuality and ethnicity, those with a disability have been kept away from the stalls of Albert Square, hidden from Mrs Brown’s house, and excluded completely from Gavin and Stacey’s friends in Billericay and Barry Island.
“While we accept that not all disabilities are visible, the fact ten times more people in the UK consider themselves disabled than are seen in these influential hit shows is a huge and damning discrepancy.
“TV producers and writers should be doing more to address this issue. Only then can they claim to make programmes truly representative of their viewers.”
In all of the shows, 6.5 per cent of the characters belonged to the LGBTQI+ community, which is more than double the UK’s openly LGBTQI+ population of 3.1 per cent. 16.5 per cent of the parts portrayed ethnic minority characters, which is somewhat more than the 13 per cent of UK citizens who identify as coming from this background.
Line of Duty, a crime drama, had the largest percentage of characters with ethnic minorities (28.1 per cent), while the comedy Gavin and Stacey, Derry Girls, and Mrs Brown’s Boys all had all-white main casts.
All Creatures Great and Small, and Peaky Blinders didn’t have any LGBTQI+ characters, however, the popular drama Killing Eve had nearly a quarter (22.2 per cent) of people who were out and proud.
The research concludes that TV shows in the UK have made significant improvements in how minorities are represented across the screens but there is much work left to be done in getting the balance correct.
It also suggests taking direct action to address the lack of both visual and non-visual disabilities.
Subscribe for our weekly news letter here!
You can unsubscribe us at any time
