This stunt-filled documentary sees TV producer Jamie O’Leary and comic Jamie MacDonald consider how creatives with low vision and blindness both survive and thrive
Blind Ambition (BBC Two) takes the tried and trusted format of putting two grumpy men together and sending them off on an exploratory adventure. The twist here is that Jamie O’Leary, a TV director, is partially sighted, and Jamie MacDonald, a standup comedian, is blind. O’Leary, who directed the series I’m Spazticus, explains that his passion projects cast disabilities in a different light. The idea here is to meet blind or partially sighted creatives, to see how their vision changes, well, their vision.
Blind Ambition is part travelogue, part documentary, part art project, and it is a bit of a shambles, at times, but a charming one. O’Leary has myopia, and at the beginning the producers send him off to an appointment at the eye doctor: “I always get a ‘wow’.” On cue, his optician greets him with one, before asking MacDonald what he would say to O’Leary, if he were to lose his sight completely. Should he prepare himself for it, or act as if it will never happen? O’Leary says, frankly, that he is in denial and can’t even let himself go there.
