The Stranger I Married

A decent docudrama about Canadian football player Terry Evanshen who fell into a coma following a severe car accident and awoke a stranger. Suffering severe memory loss and personality change, he struggled to put his life and family back together.

This is a CTV (made for TV) production, its pretty good based on that, obviously not a huge budget involved but also not necessary for the type of story being told here.

David James Elliott does an excellent job, giving a powerful performance as a man lost. He awakes in the hospital with no recollection of his family or anything else in his life. Frustrated he begins to show increasingly erratic and aggressive behaviour.

I think the biggest part of this story is Terry's wife Lorraine played by Wendy Crewson. Strong and supportive, Lorraine never gives up hope that the man she fell in love with as a teenager will pull through and get better. Even after his medical diagnosis of permanent brain damage she (almost naively) believes that with her love and support the man she married will return to normal.

There are dark sides to this story which are accurate with TBI (traumatic brain injury) including some violence and Terry forcing himself on his wife. The children also become afraid of their father but are ultimately what help save him. Worth a watch. 9/10/15