I’ve been thinking a lot about privileged white men this week. Much like the virus, they seem to be everywhere, but no amount of hand-washing or social distancing will get rid of them. Rather than become enraged by their antics, I’ve found it more helpful to pretend they don’t exist, in much the same way that rules don’t exist for Dominic Cummings, or nappies don’t exist for Jacob Rees-Mogg.

Choosing to focus on things that bolster and nourish, I re-potted my stubbornly stunted tomato plant, made an Eastern Standard cocktail to exacting ratios of gin and sugar syrup, and settled down to watch some really good, well-made, thoughtful telly. I wanted experts, people who really knew what they were talking about. I wanted kindness, and love, and found it all in the Horizon documentary on Tony Slattery. All that, and more.

There’s no denying this is, at times, a grim and unsettling piece of television. Rather flippantly titled What’s the Matter With Tony Slattery?, occasionally it’s wince-inducing viewing. While I believe that this kind of show about mental health should be made, Tony is in such a fragile, juddery state, it felt like we shouldn’t be seeing it; that his house of cards is too delicately stacked, and just the act of us watching could blow it all apart. He’s unrecognisable, like he’s been layered in a shuddering mass of prosthetic makeup, lamely dressed in a flouncy flowery shirt to give the illusion of cheeriness. When his GP, medic-to-the-stars Dr Gaynor, finishes their consultation, he waves an old photo of Tony in his face, chortling at the message written on the back: ‘can you up my dosage?’ It’s a crass moment in an otherwise sensitively-filmed story.

Looking back to those golden days of Whose Line Is It Anyway? I remembered idolising Tony Slattery, the careless lock of black hair that fell over his face as he jumped on stage, the dangerous twinkle in his eye as he leaned towards the bar to serenade Mike McShane. They were rock stars, those guys. The nimbleness of them, the fearlessness, the coolness. How did that Poldark of improv become a stuttering bundle of nerves who numbed his pain with drugs?

Tony is keen to get a specific diagnosis for his condition so that it can be properly treated, but ultimately it becomes much more important to get to the root of why he feels the way he does. In the end, we do find out why, in a breath-catchingly brutal and affecting scene which lays bare the childhood trauma that set him on this path. This is the crux, and he spent the subsequent years burying it, trying to drown it in alcohol and excess. The experts trying to help him – probing, soothing specialists – are convinced he needs to stop drinking to start his healing process, but I wanted someone to simply rage on his behalf – rail against the priest who did it, the parents he couldn’t tell, the evil of a world that could do this to an eight-year-old boy. Tony speaks of his own anger, but I didn’t see much evidence of it – he’s succeeded in blunting it, which is maybe a moving-on of sorts. What’s left is a broken shell, washed back and forth with booze.

Like I said, it’s a grim watch, and might not seem quite the uplifting distraction I needed from the news. But the thing that lifts it, stops it sinking, is Tony’s partner, Mark. Gentle, supportive, endlessly patient, he is single-handedly keeping him afloat, reminding him – and us – that there are true, good, worthy people out there. You just have to find them, and Tony, savagely unlucky in so many ways, was lucky in this one.

At a time when we’re being led by lesser men, I found that a raft to hold onto.

• Horizon: What’s the Matter With Tony Slattery? – BBC Two