BBC documentary tells the story of young man with autism looking for love

From The Guardian review in the UK. You can see a video about it on the BBC Web site.

At last: TV tackles autism without being worthy and po-faced. The results are terrific.

There's nothing worse than an awkward date. I've had a few tricky ones in my time, but nothing quite like Alex. Alex, who's 24, met Kirsty on the Internet, and now they're going to meet in person for the first time. He puts on deodorant and sunglasses, and then his mum Peggy drops him off at the cafe. He'll call her when he's finished, he says.

Kirsty turns up. She seems lovely. To be honest, Alex isn't that fussy. When he was filling in the form for the dating site, he said that he'd take anyone of any religion, ethnic group, language, hair colour, profession. She could be up to six foot five inches tall. The only thing he didn't want was a smoker – but then he admitted that if she did smoke, he'd put up with it. He would like to meet someone for a relationship, companionship, to have a family and to go bowling with.

"Hiya," says Kirsty. "You all right?"

"Hello, Kirsty," says Alex. "Pleased to meet you." He shakes Kirsty's hand and pulls a chair up for her. They get drinks, and then sit there, silently.

"Erm . . . is there anything you want to ask me?" asks Kirsty.

"I can't think of anything at the moment," says Alex.

Kirsty asks Alex if he knows about Facebook, where you can chat to your friends online. He says that he doesn't really have many friends. They decide to go for a walk in the park, and sit at opposite ends of a bench. Alex's mum Peggy is a few benches along, checking them out on the sly. Right, it's time for the end of date, which they mark with another handshake.

How did they think it went, Matt the film-maker asks them, separately. Yeah, really well, says Alex, he'd like to see her again. Huh? And there was me thinking it hadn't been a brilliant date. Shows what I know. And Kirsty says it was fun, too. She was really excited to meet Alex, and feels really happy. She has cards – "face cards", with pictures of people on them – to help show how she's feeling. People with autism, like Kirsty, often have difficulty expressing how they feel.

But this isn't really about Kirsty; she's just the date. The Autistic Me (BBC3) is about Alex, who also has autism – Asperger's, more specifically, which falls within the autism spectrum. And it's about two other autistic young men, Oli and Tom. That's the rule: you need three case studies for a documentary about people like this. Sometimes I think it's a shame – that we have to flip from story to story to story, when one really involving tale might be more powerful (and one's always better than the other two). But here it works well, because having three people with autism shows the enormous width of the spectrum, and how differently it can affect different people.

Alex may not be the chattiest dater, but he is probably the least troubled of the three. Oli, drummer and historian, is the most frustrated, but he is also the best at expressing himself. "There are times when I just can't handle it, just can't handle the fact that I'm autistic whether I like it or not," he says. "I'll grow up, yes, but it might take me longer." And Tom, at 15 the youngest of the three, is the most difficult and the most troubled by the world.

But this is not just about how they see the world; it's also about how the world sees them. Their families, in particular, because autism is much about how it affects the people around it. It's not a one-way thing, either: we get to see both the problems that these people cause their families, and the problems that their families cause them. With Tom especially: how is he supposed to grow up when he's still treated like a four-year-old at home?

It's a terrific film by Matt Rudge – at times depressing, but also warm. I think television has got better at dealing with mental illness and autism. It's become less scared about getting involved, and when it does, it doesn't feel that it needs to be worthy and po-faced. This film manages to be serious, but also relaxed. Funny, too, at times. Alex's date with Kirsty is a little sad, but also lovely. And totally hilarious.