Last week, Channel Four premiered the long-awaited documentary that looks back on the life and death of TV star Caroline Flack, after she sadly took her own life last year. The documentary touches upon her early life, her career, and the pain and suffering she endured behind closed doors.
It was February 2020; when the sad and tragic news was announced of TV star Caroline Flack’s death. After appearing in the tabloids, the months prior as she was accused of assaulting her boyfriend, it is the lead up to her death this documentary takes place.
This hard-hitting documentary explores the circumstances – both on and off-screen – in Caroline’s life that led to her death, including interviews from both her family and close friends. Different parts of her life are discussed, which were not of previous public knowledge, giving us a completely new insight into who the real Caroline Flack was.
In the year that has passed since her death, there has been endless criticism towards the media in the way they treated Flack in the lead up to her death. This issue is touched upon within the documentary as we see some of the hurtful headlines that they published when Caroline was on TV. Alongside this, we see both her friends and family’s opinions as they describe how bad the media really got to Caroline.
One thing we can take from this documentary is the negative and hurtful side of the media. Whenever Flack was going through something in her life, especially when she was called into court for the assault of her boyfriend, the tabloids continued to give her negative press by even including a photo of a bloody bedsheet stating it was her boyfriend’s blood, when in fact it wasn’t.
The media clearly continued to belittle Caroline, and in the aftermath of her death, they tried to cover up their past mistakes by retracting any negative press they previously gave her to prevent them from receiving any of this backlash.
Another topic that is touched upon throughout the documentary is Caroline’s mental health. From a young age, her family talk about how she could not handle heartbreak. When she was a teenager, after breaking up with her boyfriend, she went missing for a few days. As the years went on, the Flack family could see how certain relationships took a toll on her, and as her fame grew and the media started to settle in, the mix was not good for Caroline.
So, another thing we take from the Caroline Flack: Her Life and Death documentary is how our mental health can deeply affect us. It is when her family and friends talk about the hurt they saw Caroline go through and the hurt they felt, not only losing her but also seeing the hurt she was experiencing in the lead up to her death.
Her mother talks about how she was so sad that her daughter felt like she could not talk to her about the pain she was going through, and how if she knew it would have been the ‘last time’, the regret she feels for not doing so much with her daughter.
If you were going to take anything from this documentary, it is that if you are ever struggling, there will always be someone who loves or cares about you. As the saying goes, you may feel lonely, but you are never alone.
The documentary on Caroline Flack, the look at her life, and the look at her death is a hard-hitting and heart-wrenching watch, but it is a very important watch when looking at the society we live in today.
