TV

Educational viewing or freak show?

Supersize vs Superskinny is back tonight at 8pm on Channel 4.

The first show in the series follows twenty four stone Julie and five and a half stone Jade as they swap diets in the food clinic.  Obviously neither of them has a healthy diet – Julie eats all the time and Jade barely eats a thing and is addicted to caffeine.  The food they eat in a week is piled into creepy Dr Jessen’s food tube and hey, guess what?  The big huge girl eats more than the tiny weeny one!

Meanwhile Anna Richardson is still on the quest for the perfect body despite losing two stone in the last two years.  By the way, she’s got a book out ‘The Anna Richardson Body Blitz Diet’, what a happy coincidence.

The show also follows a group of four people suffering from anorexia as they struggle with their disorder and there is a new bit called Postcards from America where some morbidly obese people (thirty seven stone this week) beg the supersize to lose weight before it’s too late.

Maybe the creators of this show started off with a good intent, to educate people about nutrition and to shock them with the extremes of over and under eating.  But really now this is just another Channel 4 freak show designed to make so-called ‘normal’ size people feel smug while they sit on their backsides eating biscuits and watching TV.  The Postcards from America section this series seems just a pathetic excuse to allow viewers to gape in horror at even further extremes of fatness.

I say if you care that much about losing weight, turn the TV off and go out for a run.  Or if you’re that skinny, eat some pies and get a life!!

New show starring plus size actress Brooke Elliott

Drop Dead Diva, a smash in the US, is Living’s new prime time show this April.

It tells the story of Deb, a skinny blonde airhead, who is killed in a car crash and manages to get sent back to Earth in the body of Jane (Elliott) who is a US size 16 smart lawyer.   Jane has an amazing legal brain but is insecure with low self-esteem, so Deb brings some of her cool confidence to Jane’s character (confused yet?!)

I don’t know if the show will be any good, but just to see a plus size actress in the leading role of a prime time show makes it worth watching.

Coming to Living this April.