Make Me Normal (C4): ROY is 18 and is obsessed with EastEnders.

More particularly, he is obsessed with Vicky Fowler. He can remember the first time he saw her, and he can remember what she was doing - drinking a can of Lilt. He has memorised the birthdays of all the cast, and of the characters they play.

He records every episode onto a videotape, which he then carefully labels. But if he doesn't get the label on perfectly straight, he stamps on the tape and smashes it to pieces.

Roy is a pupil at the Spa School in Bermondsey, south London, one of the largest schools in the country for autistic children. Film-makers Jonathan Smith and Zac Beattie had been given unprecedented access over several months. If some of the scenes sometimes felt intrusive, the narrator reminded us that the children had given permission to be filmed on each occasion.

Munir is 12 and has Asperger's, leaving him unable to understand other people's points of view. He regularly attacks other students and staff, and never made it to the end of term at his previous school without being excluded. Munir is also in denial about his autism. "Some people think I've got Asperger's," he told us.

Despite this, there is no attempt to hide pupils' conditions from them. The school doesn't pretend that they are normal. They are told they are autistic, and staff try to explain what this means, but they cannot hide the frustration they feel. Trapped in their own worlds, they are nevertheless fully aware that there is another, normal world which is denied to them. "What would it be like being a normal kid?", Munir is asked. "I don't know," he replies.

It is when Munir's mother dies after a long battle with cancer that his autism is most revealingly illuminated. "Life goes on," he says simply. "You can't live for ever. Fifty-one she was. I'm 12 now."

He climbs into a box, because it is only there, hidden from the world, that he can show his feelings. What hurts him, he says, is knowing he can never say sorry for all the bad things he did to his mother.

For many children with autism, a special interest becomes a safe place where they can hide when the world becomes too difficult. For Munir, this is Star Wars. They rely on routine to order their lives. A new bus route throws Roy off balance and he starts screaming in the street.

They may be autistic, but they want the same things as everyone else. Roy wants a girlfriend, but doesn't know how to go about getting one. It's a familiar story for non-autistic adolescents, but in Roy's case the frustration makes him kick and spit at his friends.

All Roxanne wants is to have friends, but her autism means she doesn't know how to start or to continue friendships. When she does get a friend she starts hitting him. In one of the most agonising scenes, she is filmed through a window as she slaps herself around the head in the playground. Later, when she again agrees to be filmed, her frustration is all too evident. "I feel awfully guilty at being born like that," she says.

Published: 03/06/2005