A Fictional Account

As news of Robin Williams’ sad demise broke today, I remembered first watching him in “Mork and Mindy”, that hilarious television sitcom from the late seventies/early eighties in which he played an alien who had come to Earth.

Subsequently, of course, it was his role in “Mrs Doubtfire” which most captured my imagination. Denied proper contact with his children, Daniel Hillard, Robin Williams’ character in that film, dressed as an elderly female and applied for and secured the position of nanny to his own children. In the world of comic fiction, anything can happen.

There are of course real-life cases where unacceptable behaviour by an absent parent causes a Judge to feel it necessary to refuse or restrict contact with children. In some instances limitations can result in contact between parent and child being curtailed to letters and cards, in others to supervised visits perhaps at an access centre or public place. Restrictions are never imposed without first working on the assumption that contact is in the best interests of the child and then balancing that against a need to protect.

A real life Daniel Hillard who has already had contact curtailed because of concerns about his ability to care for his children, is unlikely to cross dress, adopt a Scottish accent and new persona not to mention flaunt a previous court order and deceive his estranged wife into employing him as a nanny. No, instead he will be advised to work with the system to prove his ability and the merit of contact for the benefit of the children. There are flaws in the system, of course, and, like Daniel Hillard, there are some parents who are left feeling that injustice has been done. That however is the stuff of documentaries not comedy films.