A DAD IS BORN

Production Manager – Jane Lowe

AP – Lucy Porter

Producer – Kate Griffiths

Film Editor – David G Hill

Director - Kira Phillips

Tom Sutcliffe The Independant
 

On the face of it, Greg Secker did not look like a promising candidate for fatherhood. He drives a Lamborghini Murciélago with a vanity plate that reads "PRO5PER", he shouts "Yeah, baby!" at moments of triumph (apparently without irony) and he
already has one broken marriage behind him, which meant that he could talk fondly about his first son in Kira Phillips's A Dad Is Born: a Wonderland Film, but had received lawyers' letters forbidding him from actually appearing on screen with him.
He's also a motivational speaker, pumping out You-Can-Be-As-Rich-As-Me bombast at expensive seminars for wannabe Gregs. I wouldn't say I took an instant dislike to him, but that's only because my reactions are getting a little sluggish with old
age. And yet by the end of Phillips's film, I felt almost fond of Greg, so genuine did his responses to his new baby appear.

It wasn't the only prejudice overturned in this lovely film, which looked at the subject of childbirth from an exclusively male perspective. I wasn't initially sure about Viktor, either, a Hungarian cab-driver whose confession that he felt a sexual entitlement to every pretty woman in the world was strong on candour but a bit short on gender diplomacy. "A woman is not a real woman if she doesn't cook," he added winningly a little later. "I cannot take any girl serious if she doesn't cook." Fortunately, his heavily pregnant girlfriend, Melinda, does cook... and even more happily Viktor turned out to be something of a diamond in the rough, rather than just a Mittel-European sexual fossil. Finally, there was Jamie, apparently the very model of a modern liberal dad, but so effectively self-tutored in the hazards of infancy that he very nearly gave himself a nervous breakdown.

As One Born Every Minute proves every week, the raw material here is 40 per cent proof stuff. You might also argue that it's over-covered already. But by concentrating exclusively on the male experience, Phillips produced something genuinely new.
There was a telling sequence filmed during the final stages of Viktor's girlfriend's labour, in which the camera never strayed from his face to the A-list event taking place just a few inches below it. It was simultaneously hilarious and moving, as he unconsciously mirrored every groan and heave, looked nauseous to the point of fainting and then finally burst into uncontrollable tears as his daughter slithered into the world.

Greg was networking his birth within minutes of the delivery, posting a photograph of mother, child and mobcapped father on his Facebook page. And Jamie was still pacing around anxiously waiting for the big moment: "I feel immensely proud, I feel immensely happy and I feel immensely terrified all at the same time," he said halfway through labour, a sentiment that would have been familiar to almost any father watching. In the aftermath, most seemed to perform well enough, though with different degrees of comfort. Greg, who'd naturally hired a maternity nurse to cover the tough stuff, was caught blissing out with his newborn son sleeping on his chest and confessed that it was a relief to briefly give up the pantomime of market-place supremacy that is his chief product.

Viktor spoke so sweetly about changing his daughter's nappy and supporting his anxious, depressed partner that he brought tears to your eyes. And Jamie, oppressed by his new responsibilities and depressed by lack of sleep, simply did the crying
himself. He'd revealed at the beginning that his workmates thought he was a big softy for swotting up so heavily in advance. I think he'd better brace himself for a bit of teasing this morning, though he may still be far too exhausted to care what mere adults think. Phillips ended her film with footage through the windscreen of a car driving into thick fog, as good an image of the unpredictable journey of fatherhood as anything I can think of.

 

Keith Watson  Metro

Wonderland: A Dad Is Born laid bare the sleep-deprived horror of parenting

TV review: Wonderland: A Dad Is Born was a classier affair than the recent Daddy Daycare, but its sleep-deprived subjects were no more comforting for anxious parents-to-be.

Funny, isn’t it? You wait ages for a programme about how hard it is for men to be good dads and then two come along at once. Although, to be fair, Wonderland: A Dad Is Born (BBC2) was cut from an altogether upmarket brand of soft absorbent nappy
than C4’s budget Daddy Daycare.


A Dad Is Born offered us the chance to meet three chaps on the cusp of fatherhood and, in the case of at least two, it was clear they were meant to get our backs up at the start.

‘Greg is a multimillionaire trader,’ ran the voice-over; and then we saw Greg, in his orange baseball cap driving with his lap-top (on his lap) and yelping: ‘Let’s make some money.’ Minicab driver Viktor was an unreconstructed chauvinist who reckoned ‘a woman is not a real woman if she doesn’t cook’. Charmers, both.

But just when you were thinking the human race was really going down the tubes if this was the gene pool we were working with, something happened. Birth.

Viktor started sobbing in the delivery room, Greg got all misty-eyed as baby Zac nestled on his chest. This was the sentimental message toddling around the edges of the ostensibly detached A Dad Is Born: even the most objectionable idiots turn into fluffy bunnies once the seed is sown.


I didn’t really buy it but it was hard not to soften as Greg and Viktor found their sensitive sides. But the one I really felt for was Jay, over-thinking the whole business by reading every baby book going and fretting over the possibility of his new-born turning blue or choking on mucous or a zillion other potential pitfalls.


To his zombiefied, sleep-deprived horror, the reality turned out to be even scarier.


 

Michael Deacon The Telegraph


Wonderland was wonderful, as it always is. This week’s edition of the eclectic BBC Two documentary strand was about what it’s like to become a father. At least, that was what it was nominally about. Really it was about character. This is the way
with Wonderland: no matter what the purported topic (cat ownership, debutantes, relationship counselling), ultimately it boils down to how varied, strange and fascinating human beings are.


Last night we met three prospective fathers. Jamie, an HR worker, was deeply apprehensive. He read so many parenting guides he had nightmares about them. He downloaded an iPad app designed to soothe baby by replicating the sound of Mummy’s heartbeat. He sought the advice of his own, rather more laid-back, father. It was, “Make sure you’ve got plenty of wine.” Jamie did not look reassured.Viktor, a Hungarian cab driver, was determined to do a better job than his father, a violent
alcoholic. He was sweetly protective of his wife, if old-fashioned. “I cannot take any girl serious if she doesn’t cook. Because so good to feel the care.”


My favourite, though, was Greg. Greg was a millionaire motivational speaker with an Apprentice-style flair for metaphor (“Here I am, day after day, training these guys to squeeze the orange, but the guys who are filling up the orange juicer aren’t chucking enough oranges in”). He complained that taking a week off work for the birth would cost him £3.5million. The number plate of his Lamborghini (“a real proper man-car”) read “PRO5PER”.


But Wonderland doesn’t invite viewers to sneer, and it went on to show that even Greg could be softened by fatherhood. “Every time he lies on my chest,” he cooed of his newborn son, “you get this feeling of karmic sea.” God ble55 him.