Marty Baines is my spirit animal.

 Or why Unforgotten gets autism sort of right. Spoilers ahead for the current season of Unforgotten, if you're watching along, be warned. 

So Unforgotten finished last Monday. A deeply unsatisfying end where the lecturer's daughter killed off her dad because he was a *wifebeater, the gaylord illegal stayed and the Irish bird resigned. Incidentally there is no way in the world the ungrateful SJW kids in her class would have accepted her apology IRL, I know how the left operate, and she would be persona non grata online and a pariah off, look at Graham Lineham and his stance on trans issues for massive bridge burning, psychopathic left wing rage. 

No what I'm really going to say here is that Marty Baines played by Maximilian Fairley is my quintessential good portrayal of Autism, I believe he, like me is a fellow Autist, Checks, yes he is and it's  a hell of a good debut, too. If he doesn't win awards for this I'll be sad.

We see him part of a right leaning Incel forum and  try to deal with social services ,who either don't care of massively overstretched. He gradually loses the plot, not helped by fact he has to care for his mum (Betty from Some Mothers do have 'em). Most shows seem to see us as savants or non verbal, so to see us as we truly are, broken, barely functional but still human. It's a rarity. I know how much I hate chipper sods like the guy from Big Bang theory. Or quirky, childlike personalities as in some movies. Here is someone who speaks for me.

He has unconventional ways, likes to break and enter, is scruffy and is very much isolated. He also has a love of planes and right wing politics. Including believing in absolute bollocks such as the WEF, and other conspiraloon theories. But I've never seen someone approach autism like this. The total no future, no guts no girl, no glory that this disability is. Also the awkwardness of it all, the amount of times I've screwed up in life is unreal, thanks to not being able to read a person. In the end to retreat and family are often your only friends. 

In the end, with his mum in hospital (wouldn't this be Bucklands as its set in Deal / Dover I had an aunty live and work for Bucklands.) and there is the brief carrot of some help on the horizon, social workers and perhaps a way off the pills he's prescribed. 

* I've never actually seen a show where its the woman who's the violent one for once or a mix of the two like my old neighbours were. Especially if alcohol is a major player in the relationship.  Kicking and yelling and beating lumps out of each other. I tell a lie Father Ted for the last one and they put on a front where Ted shows up and resume when he's out of shot.