Embarrassing Bodies: bare your boils for the greater good
"Embarrassing illness" is not a phrase coined by Damian McBride, though he did hope to turn it into a weapon of mass detestation against David Cameron. McBride borrowed it from the 2008 Channel 4 series of that name. It has now been superseded by Embarrassing Bodies, which was transmitted through April and May, with a number of follow-up programmes in the pipeline for later this year. It's presented by a knowledgeable, charming and lens-friendly team of medics who give you the sense that a rectal examination executed by them would be a privilege. They are led by Pixie McKenna, a no-nonsense Scot who dispatches patients with an antiseptic briskness, and Christian Jessen, a hunk with a melting charm and a bedside manner to match. One woman, Alison, who enters their telly-clinic complaining of a problem in the chest department is told by him: "If I may say so, you've got good boobs." Steady doctor, steady.
The series, produced by Maverick, lays bare a rich and horrifying compendium of ailments: retrograde ejaculation, asymmetrical breasts, a bulbous tongue, leaking bladders, nasal polyps, swollen lips, rotting teeth, lumpy labia, angry leg rashes, knobbly eye bags, a hereditary funnel chest, weeping nipples, extreme hernias, malfunctioning lymph glands, an over-hirsute rectum…. "There's no shame, we're all the same," say the programme's trails. In view of that litany, I sincerely hope not.
Channel 4 gave me some impressive web statistics at the mid-series point. The online videos had been viewed 3m times, a quarter of those being of the teenage-focused "am I normal?" clips. A quarter of a million people had completed the STD risk checker and around 1.5m had used the database of illnesses. Overall it's quite a Reithian package that informs, educates and (somewhat ghoulishly) entertains. And much of the entertainment relies on that television staple, the makeover. Audiences have always enjoyed magical metamorphoses. Here, dentures are restored, pockmarked backs are smoothed over and foetid ears are cleansed—and greeted with all the emotional gratitude that the genre now demands. Yet one aspect of the patients' behaviour baffles me. Rebecca has one breast that is almost twice the size of the other and she is so embarrassed that she can't take her bra off, even when making love. Bridget has—and there's no way of euphemising this—an uncomfortably large vagina and has ended up in a separate bedroom to her husband. But here they are, willing to reveal all on television. Extraordinary.
The series's most inspiring story follows Charlotte, aged eight. She visits Dr Christian with her mother, complaining of verrucas. Once she removes her shoes, enormous cauliflower-like growths are revealed. The doc speculates that her immune system may not be functioning well enough to defeat these viruses. Tests reveal there is, indeed, a problem with Charlotte's CD4 white blood corpuscles. In the end it is decided she will need a bone marrow transplant. Her mother, who had cursed the verrucas, now blesses them for revealing Charlotte's life-threatening condition. And what of Charlotte? Well, she's happy because Dr Christian brings her a pair of much-coveted mauve flip flops to wear when her feet have cleared up. Dr Kildare, eat your heart out.
I do, however, have a carp or two. First, there's the woefully indiscriminate use of music, culled from Classic FM's greatest clichés. Second, and more significantly, there's the way that 4OD—Channel 4's video-on-demand service—operates. Each time I clicked on an edition of the show I was made to watch the same series trail first. Why? I knew what I'd ordered up and didn't need reminding ad nauseum. And a similar technique is applied to the editing of all these factual programmes. At the beginning of each part, they repeat what we have already seen, as though we're idiots. It's done to try to welcome channel hoppers—but why should we all suffer just because others have attention deficit disorder?
"Embarrassing illness" is not a phrase coined by Damian McBride, though he did hope to turn it into a weapon of mass detestation against David Cameron. McBride borrowed it from the 2008 Channel 4 series of that name. It has now been superseded by Embarrassing Bodies, which was transmitted through April and May, with a number of follow-up programmes in the pipeline for later this year. It's presented by a knowledgeable, charming and lens-friendly team of medics who give you the sense that a rectal examination executed by them would be a privilege. They are led by Pixie McKenna, a no-nonsense Scot who dispatches patients with an antiseptic briskness, and Christian Jessen, a hunk with a melting charm and a bedside manner to match. One woman, Alison, who enters their telly-clinic complaining of a problem in the chest department is told by him: "If I may say so, you've got good boobs." Steady doctor, steady.
The series, produced by Maverick, lays bare a rich and horrifying compendium of ailments: retrograde ejaculation, asymmetrical breasts, a bulbous tongue, leaking bladders, nasal polyps, swollen lips, rotting teeth, lumpy labia, angry leg rashes, knobbly eye bags, a hereditary funnel chest, weeping nipples, extreme hernias, malfunctioning lymph glands, an over-hirsute rectum…. "There's no shame, we're all the same," say the programme's trails. In view of that litany, I sincerely hope not.
Channel 4 gave me some impressive web statistics at the mid-series point. The online videos had been viewed 3m times, a quarter of those being of the teenage-focused "am I normal?" clips. A quarter of a million people had completed the STD risk checker and around 1.5m had used the database of illnesses. Overall it's quite a Reithian package that informs, educates and (somewhat ghoulishly) entertains. And much of the entertainment relies on that television staple, the makeover. Audiences have always enjoyed magical metamorphoses. Here, dentures are restored, pockmarked backs are smoothed over and foetid ears are cleansed—and greeted with all the emotional gratitude that the genre now demands. Yet one aspect of the patients' behaviour baffles me. Rebecca has one breast that is almost twice the size of the other and she is so embarrassed that she can't take her bra off, even when making love. Bridget has—and there's no way of euphemising this—an uncomfortably large vagina and has ended up in a separate bedroom to her husband. But here they are, willing to reveal all on television. Extraordinary.
The series's most inspiring story follows Charlotte, aged eight. She visits Dr Christian with her mother, complaining of verrucas. Once she removes her shoes, enormous cauliflower-like growths are revealed. The doc speculates that her immune system may not be functioning well enough to defeat these viruses. Tests reveal there is, indeed, a problem with Charlotte's CD4 white blood corpuscles. In the end it is decided she will need a bone marrow transplant. Her mother, who had cursed the verrucas, now blesses them for revealing Charlotte's life-threatening condition. And what of Charlotte? Well, she's happy because Dr Christian brings her a pair of much-coveted mauve flip flops to wear when her feet have cleared up. Dr Kildare, eat your heart out.
I do, however, have a carp or two. First, there's the woefully indiscriminate use of music, culled from Classic FM's greatest clichés. Second, and more significantly, there's the way that 4OD—Channel 4's video-on-demand service—operates. Each time I clicked on an edition of the show I was made to watch the same series trail first. Why? I knew what I'd ordered up and didn't need reminding ad nauseum. And a similar technique is applied to the editing of all these factual programmes. At the beginning of each part, they repeat what we have already seen, as though we're idiots. It's done to try to welcome channel hoppers—but why should we all suffer just because others have attention deficit disorder?
