Rebuilding the relationship between father and son
I Want My Dad Back is a thought-provoking, emotional; but also funny and heart-warming programme which follows two fathers and their sons who want to re-build their relationships before it's too late with the help of a leading psychotherapist.
Key Format Points Focus on problematic relationships between estranged fathers and sons Each Father moves into the son’s homes for five days Father and son then move to an outdoor centre for three days, carrying out various activities Finally, the son moves in with the father for five days Expert advise on hand to help build the relationship Structure of the programme Boys are in crisis. With almost half of marriages predicted to end in divorce, with nearly two-thirds of fathers losing contact with their kids within two years of a relationship breakdown, huge numbers of children are growing up seeing their fathers rarely, if at all. I Want My Dad Back attempts to repair bonds between absentee dads and their lost sons, and prevent the painful pattern from being repeated in the next generation. In the UK alone, more than one million children never see their fathers. Many more see their fathers, but very rarely. I Want My Dad Back aims to highlight an important social issue in a remarkably thoughtful and moving way. Focusing specifically on the problematic relationship between two fathers and their sons - and with the help of one of the country’s leading psychotherapist – I Want My Dad Back explores the damage caused when this relationship does not exist, and attempts to create a space from which the healing process can begin. Each father initially moves into his son’s home for five days, to explore the past, witness the lack of any real communication, get to know his son, and attempt to enforce some boundaries. For the following three days, each father and son move to an outdoor centre in the heart of the countryside: Studies have shown that in order to get men talking openly one has to create a safe and exciting environment. The activities agenda is designed to break through emotional barriers and open each character up completely. Over the three days an expert designs specific activities to enable this to happen and is on hand to facilitate the process. The programme is filmed over a final five-day period in which each son now moves in with his father. In each case, the father has never had his son at home. As before, an expert is on hand to force the key issues and in a poignant twist each father is encouraged to examine his own relationship with his father and confront his own past. I Want My Dad Back also brings other family members into clearer focus and although this is a series about the male relationship between a father and his son, the dynamics of these other relationships play a crucial role in the emotional journeys and their outcomes. Each family is filmed continuously and simultaneously over a fourteen-day period with some catch-up filming in the weeks after.
