"Factual" Entertainment

Debbie Travis' Facelift / Alliance Atlantis

Documentaries and docu-reality shows are focusing on body issues. The body is at the center of viewers' preoccupations in documentaries that are scoring high rating figures in the United Kingdom: the collection "Bodyshock" on Channel 4 and "Hidden Lives" on Five. Coaching, which had topped ratings by tackling out of control kids or teens and weight loss for adults, has switched this season its efforts to children's obesity and their appalling eating habits. The producer of the hit retraining format for troubled teens "Brat Camp" has adapted its method to obesity with "I know what you ate last summer" (on Five in the United Kingdom): obese teenagers are sent to a weight loss boot camp in the USA. In Norway on TV Norge in "Et lettere liv" ("Fat kids, fit kids") teenagers are sent to the Canary Islands for retraining. The British format "Honey we're killing the kids" which has worried parents since 2005 by proving to parents they are condemning their kids to an early death by letting them eat junk food is continuing its international career: Australia, Germany, Sweden. In the United Kingdom in late summer and early fall Channel 4, Five or BBC Three aired several documentaries on overweight people: for example "Britain's fattest teenager" (Five). Cable satellite channel Living TV launched the series "Chubby Children" that attempts to reeducate obese children. Coaching is changing: in the United Kingdom: the two female presenters that had launched the makeover trend on BBC with "What not to wear" attempted to not be outmoded by changing channels in 2006 and widening their influence on ITV1 in "Undress", their coaching palette for solving crises in couples. Couples in crisis are at the center of the lessons taught in "Sex academy" aired in Denmark and in Norway in 2006.

Source: The WIT / Extra Cool Report