I, Swear (2025) — Bad Dads Film Review — Cleaned Transcript

Reegs: Right, okay. Before we get going — we've just dealt with a huge infestation of hornets.

Dan: It was just one hornet. But at least the size of a small chicken.

Reegs: Which is pretty big for any kind of flying creature.

Dan: It plagued us for the last couple of pods actually. It seemed to chill out once it heard our dulcet tones. But we saw an opportunity and we took it. It was getting quite aggressive — headbutting that Christmas decoration.

Reegs: One of them was kind of making a new nest in there. We removed everything and it's gone.

Dan: And if it had stung us, we probably would have sworn.

Reegs: Dan might have, yes. Which brings us to the film — I, Swear.

Dan: Yeah. It's been out a little while now — September, October 2025 I think. Chris had seen it, but he's away tonight. I'd just caught up with it. I'd seen it in the news with the BAFTA awards recently.

Reegs: The BAFTAs really confirmed that we still need this film, even after it came out, because people got completely the wrong idea. At the ceremony, John Davidson had a tic and said a racial epithet while two Black actors were on stage. There was a massive internet pile-on — people just proving they still don't understand this condition.

Dan: And the BAFTA lot didn't cover themselves in glory either.

Reegs: I believe the production team had been told there was a chance this could happen. The problems were: one, there was a microphone placed right next to John Davidson — he himself pointed that out afterwards as a terrible idea. And two, the BBC chose not to remove it from the edit. It was up for two or three hours before anyone acted on it. They had people on site editing in real time. They knew this sort of thing could happen and they didn't get on top of it. But the questions afterwards — people asking whether he was actually racist — you just need to watch the movie and understand his lived experience. That answers the question very easily.

Dan: And the film opens with him going to collect an award at the Palace. Of all the places where you'd really want to be on your best behaviour.

Reegs: He's clearly very nervous. He's got his vape in his hand, wants to stay outside. He's been given a pep talk by Dottie — as we'll come to know her. He's eventually convinced to go in, it's 2019, there's a very formal ceremony, the Queen in the background. And he walks in and shouts "Fuck the Queen" before he's even got to his seat.

Dan: And then we cut to a younger version of him.

Reegs: 1983. New Order's Blue Monday is playing. We meet young John in Galashiels — and I thought the child actor here was absolutely terrific. It was his debut performance. Scott Ellis Watson.

Dan: He'll be delighted he got a shout out on Bad Dads.

Reegs: He plays John as a young lad. He's a goalkeeper — makes a terrific penalty save. His father is there watching, encouraging him. His coach says there's a scout from Berwick Rangers coming down to watch him. He's clearly got promise. He loves it. He's got a paper round, a bit of money in his pocket. He's a little bit interested in the girls already — on his first day at school he asks one out and she says yes. Things are going well.

Dan: And it quickly becomes clear in school that he's got this nervous twitch. He's reading out loud in front of the class and he clearly becomes uncomfortable.

Reegs: He goes to the bathroom to settle himself. When a teacher comes and sits near him, he tells them to go away — or words to that effect — and he gets his hand smacked.

Dan: Which in 1983 was still a thing.

Reegs: I can just about remember talk of the slipper at school, but I don't think I ever got it. Did you?

Dan: Oh yes. She hit me on the hand.

Reegs: It's mad. No wonder we all turned out the way we did.

Dan: And it's not just the teachers — nobody, including John himself, understands what's happening to him. It's not a thing people knew about in the eighties. He'd been a nice lad, and this is completely out of character.

Reegs: And it happens fairly suddenly, which makes it worse. Then there's the football trial. The Berwick Rangers scout turns up — he's got this magnificent lilac shell suit on and a curly perm mullet. Very Keegan meets Maradona. But John has an absolute nightmare. His hand is injured from being hit at school, he doesn't feel comfortable enough to tell anyone, and he has a terrible session.

Dan: His dad comes home absolutely embarrassed and ashamed, which just furthers John's anxiety and turmoil.

Reegs: It escalates fast. Scenes of him at the dinner table, spitting food — he can't stop himself. His family have no context for this, no word for it, no framework. He's made to eat in front of the fireplace on his own. It becomes completely conditioned into him.

Dan: This got me in the feels several times. The kid playing young John is just so good — you see this lovely lad who had the whole world ahead of him and watch it all fall apart.

Reegs: The pressure gets to his parents. His father — heavily implied to be an alcoholic — leaves. Just goes, and is literally never mentioned again in the film. His mother is a nurse, but she's completely overwhelmed — passive aggressive, just doesn't know what to do. And John believes his father left because of him. He walks into the river to try to take his own life.

Dan: And his mother's response is basically: it is what it is. She doesn't take any of the weight off him.

Reegs: His life has literally fallen apart in a matter of weeks. Bullied, in constant trouble at school, blown the football trial, his date at the cinema — her mum sat two rows in front to chaperone, and he turns around and says "suck my dick." What he says always tends to be the worst possible thing you could say in any given situation.

Dan: Every time.

Reegs: We jump forward to 1996. He's got a Tourette syndrome diagnosis by now, but nobody would have known what that was. He's on medication — Haloperidol — which suppresses the tics, but he's drowsy and isolated. He's got no friends, no job, no prospects. Then he runs into Murray in a shop — an old school friend — and his mum says go on, go with him.

Dan: Murray's just come back from Australia because his mum has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. He was doing well over there but, you know, it is what it is.

Reegs: They go back to Murray's house and they have this lovely moment of reconnecting. And then dinner. John opens the door to Murray's mum, Dottie, and the first thing he says is — "are you going to die of cancer?"

Dan: And she laughs. She says that's the most honest anyone's been with her in weeks.

Reegs: He goes upstairs and smashes a mirror in one of his tics. Goes outside, beating himself up. And she just comes out and says, come on, dinner's ready. No fuss. No apology needed. She'd worked in a health facility for five years previously and has some experience of conditions not entirely unlike this.

Dan: She has this conversation with him. He apologizes for the tics. She says: look, it's the apologizing that drives me mad. When you're in this house, don't apologize. And he says, okay, thanks — and immediately smashes a plate. But he doesn't apologize.

Reegs: That's the key moment. He's finally found somewhere he can be accepted as he is.

Dan: And Dottie — with her own terminal diagnosis — is looking for meaning in her remaining months. She convinces the family: I want him to move in. She takes him in as a project, if you like. Though it's clearly much more than that.

Reegs: The film is not massively kind on his mum, but it does acknowledge: there was simply nothing in place to help her. No support, no respite, no social system.

Dan: She's a woman on her own, raising kids, with a marriage that's broken down, and a condition in her child that makes no sense and causes him to punch her and spit in her face and call her awful things. You can't imagine.

Reegs: Dottie weens him off the medication because she knows the side effects. And once he's off it — still ticking, but far less repressed — he and Murray go out. First time in a long time. He's on the dance floor. It looks like it might be okay. He knocks a pint out of someone's hand. That's enough. A brawl starts immediately.

Dan: A nightclub in the eighties. Macho culture. No chance.

Reegs: And the police aren't much better. He ends up with an assault charge.

Dan: But Dottie's solution isn't therapy or medication — it's a job. A purpose.

Reegs: There's a community centre looking for an assistant. An elderly caretaker called Tommy does the interview. And this is one of the great scenes — a regular job interview, intercut with him shouting "you wrinkly bastard" and "spunk for milk."

Dan: But he means every word of the right things. He says, look, I know there are other candidates, but I'm always on time. It's my routine. I'll set out the chairs. And you think back to that fourteen-year-old lad. You just want to give him a chance.

Reegs: He also punches Tommy's dog during the interview. Quite hard. He knows the job's gone.

Dan: But it isn't. It takes a few days and Tommy gives him it.

Reegs: Meanwhile Dottie gets the results of her follow-up appointment. The terminal cancer diagnosis was wrong. She's going to be fine.

Dan: Double celebration. She sends him to the Chinese takeaway to get them a slap-up meal. A girl comes out in a leather skirt and he can't help himself. He calls her something awful. Apologizes, tries to explain — she's not having it. Two men are waiting for him on the bridge on his way back. They beat him with a crowbar.

Reegs: And then the court case from the nightclub incident comes to trial. He gets to "I swear" — takes the oath — and then starts swearing. He's removed from court in contempt. But then they get character witnesses, and it becomes a kind of landmark case.

Dan: Tommy's testimony, with John shouting "spunk for milk" in the background, is magnificent.

Reegs: And the judge says something important: it's not recognized in Scottish law, this condition — but who would make this up? Who would invent something that gets you thrown out of school, ruins all your relationships, gets you beaten up repeatedly? And not just once, but keep it going for years?

Dan: He's acquitted.

Reegs: And life starts very slowly to come together. Dottie sets him up with a flat in a tower block. He says, what do you think? He goes: it's a shithole. I like it. He has to put bars over the balcony because of his compulsions. He falls in with some local lads who are just using his flat as somewhere to drink. One of them wants to use him as a drug mule.

Dan: He's a bit naive, really. A vulnerable adult in many ways.

Reegs: He's walking through town carrying this package, and he cannot stop himself shouting "half price heroin for sale." He sees police officers across the street. First thing he does — "pigs, pigs, pigs." Then he turns around and walks the other way and they stop him. He goes, I've got crack cocaine up my jumper, you c**t, half price.

Dan: And the package turns out to be sugar. They'd tested him first. Just as well.

Reegs: Dottie collects him and says, I don't think that flat's working out. She gives him a book about Tourette's. And this marks the beginning of his self-education. He becomes an expert — in himself first, and then for others.

Dan: And Tommy passes away. Very sad. John finds him at home, and in the middle of this heartbreaking moment of grief, every instinct his tics have is to ruin it. "I killed him." He didn't. "I killed him." He didn't. Like, his grief is being interrupted by his condition.

Reegs: And then the moment — he goes for Tommy's job as caretaker. He doesn't expect to get it. He walks in and says, I'm the best man for the job. And the interviewer says: actually, you are. We wouldn't want anyone else. And it comes with accommodation.

Dan: That got me a third time. A nice quiet little terraced house, just right for him.

Reegs: And from there he starts doing community work. A couple bring their teenage daughter to see him — she has Tourette's too, at least as badly. She doesn't want to meet him. But they get in the car and have this three-minute tick-off. She's going: "letterboxes." He's going: "your father f***ed a jellyfish." And they're both laughing.

Dan: Just absolutely going at it. And then they have a real conversation, and she's never met anyone else with Tourette's before. To just be able to say, yeah I've got that too, and have it understood — massive.

Reegs: He ends up running Tourette's weekends. Parents, kids, teenagers — all together. And he says: for once, you're not the minority. Eleven-year-olds calling each other c**ts across the table and it being completely fine.

Dan: Society is starting to catch up with him, slowly.

Reegs: He goes into schools. He gets brought in to educate the police by one of the officers who'd filled him in years earlier. He says: fuck the police. And they laugh.

Dan: He gets the letter from the Queen. The MBE. And then later — Nottingham University and a clinical trial of a non-invasive median nerve stimulation device. Looks like a watch. They put it on him and he walks through a library in silence.

Reegs: When the climax of a film is a man walking quietly through a library and it feels like a genuine triumph, that's really good filmmaking. He'd mentioned before he'd never go into a library because he didn't want to put everyone else through it.

Dan: He makes it all the way through. Not one tic.

Reegs: The device only suppresses about 60% of cases and it isn't a cure. But the idea that something non-invasive might exist to improve quality of life like that — remarkable.

Dan: He has a conversation with a girl on the train on the way back. The film hints that maybe that part of his life — a relationship — might still be possible. And over the credits we get footage of the real John Davidson from a documentary. Amazing stuff. Including him trying to cross the road with his dog, going "cross" when he means "stay" — and the dog just seems to know. Waits for the right cue and goes when it's needed.

Reegs: Brilliant film.

Dan: Brilliant film. Got me in the feels multiple times. If you haven't seen it, go and find it.

Reegs: Really wonderful. And very funny too, which is the miracle of it — hilarious and heartbreaking at the same time.

Dan: Strong recommend. Spunk for milk.

Reegs: Spunk for milk.