TV… Supersize vs Superskinny (2008-14)

#2000s #2010s #AllPosts

 

WARNING! British diet TV Series can damage your wealth…

 

Some British supersizers and superskinnies swap unhealthy diets on TV as you do.

 

Jessen and his contestants

Jessen and his contestants

Supersize vs superskinny (2014), Channel 4 and photos © Channel 4

 

Once upon a time, British television went through a wee phase of diet reality programmes. In these programmes, nice, kind and helpful patronising doctors and diet “gurus” helped the mass unwashed of the British Isles see the error of their dieting ways. This was by painfully reminding them how much they eat in horrific, gratuitous, food-wasting ways.

Two of these programmes are now currently being shown over here so Finns can be shocked at British diets at their worst. And / or marvel at the sheer variety of fattening foods available in the UK. The expat Brits, meanwhile sob as they remember culinary delights such as Pop-Tarts, cream buns and battered fish and chips.

One example of these shows is Gillian McKeith’s You Are What You Eat. This show was previously seen on Britain’s Channel 4. In this programme, McKeith – not so subtly – told us the benefits of pumpkin seeds so much we bought kilogrammes of the stuff (well some of us did). She also reminds a poor defenceless, larger member of the public how much they ate in a week by displaying it on a giant table crammed with all the goodies that you dreamt about as a kid.

As well as wasting enough food to help a homeless person for a few days, the poor subject is humiliated further as their poo is then examined and discussed by McKeith. This is described Jilly Goolden style concerning its colour, odour and texture as if it was a fine wine, and not a human waste product.

For the benefit of those of you who don’t remember Goolden, she was a much parodied British TV presenter from the 1980s and presented the TV programme imaginatively titled Food and Drink. She was famous for using more adjectives than your average Scrabble Game to describe a wine and made gittering an art form.

Another programme which my Darlin Husband and I watched before we moved here and that is now also gracing Finnish TV is Supersize vs Superskinny. The main presenter is Dr Christian Jessen. Or as he is affectionately known in our household Dr Julian after his twin separated from birth. Julian Sands. Sands, movie fans will know was the fop-haired romantic male lead of many a 1980s movie.

These films include such gems as the handsome lead in A Room with a View and the creepy guy in Boxing Helena. This latter film is not a movie tie-in referring to his co-star in the first of these films, Helena Bonham Carter. Sands was also the terribly English rival for Amanda Pays’s affection in Brat Pack film Oxford Blues (1984) up against the then teenage girl’s pin-up, Rob Lowe (read no chance, Julian) and a Warlock as the titular warlock. Sands has worked steadily since the 1980s but these are the only roles I remember him in. But I digress…

In this programme, Sands Jessen pairs an overweight person with an underweight person in his “clinic”. Both contestants are subjected to wearing beige underwear. They then stand in two lines of shame of overweights and underweights facing each other like in an episode of Deadliest Warrior. You can almost hear the Deadliest Warrior dude – who my Darlin Husband has just informed me was also the narrator for the Gerard Butler film, 300 – doing his Deadliest Warrior introduction to each side.

At the pairing off, both victims face each other and then head off together to be monitored ie filmed and swap their diet for 5 days. This leads to lots of wistful looks from each contestant as they say goodbye to their current diets. It then consists of the underweight person getting the recycled contents of Gillian McKeith’s Table of Shame and the overweight person getting the calories equivalent to a fun-sized chocolate bar. Then they discuss their stories and bond over photos of them as kids, in some kind of weird psychotherapy.

Soon after starting their diet, the overweight person is shipped off to America where they meet someone even bigger than they are. It is at this point my Darlin Husband objects because the overweight person gets a free holiday in the United States while the underweight person stays at home. He doesn’t get his free holiday with his fellow skinnies. Probably as Bob Geldof and the Board of Ethics would understandably object.

As somewhere in America the larger one visits an even more overweight person, the Brit painfully bonds with this American’s story over a meal in the local greasy diner. This is usually over the most fattening thing on the menu. Meanwhile, skinnies have to listen to the “everything you wanted to know about anorexia but were afraid to ask” monologue from a presenter. She tells you really patronising facts about anorexia such as men can get anorexia too. No shit, Sherlock.

In the first series, the recycled food for each contestant was hurled into their very own tube of shame just to make the point (said with more than a hint of sarcasm) that overweight people eat more.

Jenssen – wearing one of his famous cheesecloth shirts – then sits down, adopts his stock earnest face, as he tilts his head to the side. He then mansplains to them what medical conditions affect their current body size with slides and statistics. Once the five days are up the victims then go home to adopt a normal diet (allegedly).

X months later – ie when they have lost or gained sufficient weight to prove this show is helpful and safe to try at home – Jenssen brings them back to the clinic and reunites the pair in a soft focus TV reunion. Then he weighs them and tells them about their progress. Usually, they have made progress, so the viewers are then subjected to their soft-focus victory dance for losing or gaining weight while the credits roll.

At which point, all expats watching sob and frantically look up t’internet for British savouries and cakes and thus ignore the superhigh postage. As we expats in Finland leap with joy and withdraw our life savings, some of us remember that a certain British brand of coffee and biscuits has recently arrived in Finland.

 

Weeper Rating: 😦  😦 /10

Handsqueeze Rating:  0 /10

Hulk Rating: ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ /10

 

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Food in Film Blogathon 2017. No 58

This review was added to Silver Screenings and Speakeasy’s Food in Film Blogathon.

• Other reality TV series that I’ve reviewed on this blog include my posts on Grand Designs, Selling Sunset, Clarkson’s Farm and the Finnish reality series Au Pairit and Sinkkulaiva.
• I also reviewed a book from 2022 about this television genre, True Story, What Reality TV Says About Us by Danielle J Lindemann, PhD.

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