The Human Face BBC1
Horizon BBC2
Fertility Tourists BBC1
ER C4
Crossroads ITV
Elizabeth Hurley was hired to inject some va-va-voom into BBC1's new science show, The Human Face, playing 'Janet' - a glamorous-but-dumb assistant in a series of unfunny sketches alongside John Cleese's 'Professor Cleese'. Oddly, there were all sorts of mildly cheeky, yet laboriously scripted digs, from Cleese about 'Janet's' acting ability ('I told 'em to get Judi Dench'), so one can only assume she was there to wear yet another catsuit and prove herself to be a jolly good sport in the process.
Hurley-burlesque costume changes aside, it was possible to watch 50 minutes of The Human Face without learning a single thing one couldn't have picked up from a 10-year-old copy of Cosmo: laughing and smiling is good for you; too much time spent in front of computer screens is alienating and married couples who display sneering expressions of contempt while in each other's company are likely to be heading for divorce... er, run that by me again, John!
Cleese is such a national treasure that he could propose a history of toasted sandwiches and the BBC wouldn't hesitate to commission a 10-part series!
It's been, oh, easily weeks since the last highly emotive, breast-beating, whither-our-children documentary, but along came Horizon's Taming The Problem Child to scare the hell out of parents, while putting everyone else off procreation. Given the choice between procuring the services of Michael 'Heal the Kids' Jackson as a childminder or hiring American psychologist Dr Ron Federici to tame your troubled offspring, don't hesitate: at least with Jackson the kids would get to pet a llama.
In Sussex, five-year-old Hayley's parents were at the end of their tether - mildly autistic and prone to spectacular tantrums, Hayley had been excluded from school for fighting. While in Texas, 12-year-old Sergei had been adopted by an American couple from a Russian orphanage at the age of eight (he had been found wandering the streets of St Petersburg like a stray puppy four years earlier). Sergei's rages were now threatening the very stability of his family.
These were two very different cases but Federici chose to treat them exactly the same way: deprived of their 'personality', with books, toys and computer games consigned to packing cases, the two kids were expected to spend several weeks no further than three feet away from their parents, obeying orders at all times. Violations and tantrums were punishable by being held face down on the floor until the children complied, and then in order to recreate what Federici perceives to be a broken parent-child bond responsible for the bad behaviour, there was also enforced hugging.
In the event, the hold-downs made for grim viewing and while it was one thing to watch a little girl being forced to sit on her mother's knee, it was quite another to witness burly Sergei being made to do the same: his fury was palpable. In children's homes this kind of behaviour might prompt an investigation, but elsewhere it seems documentary camera crews can stop by to watch. I hasten to qualify this, however, by stressing that Hayley's and Sergei's parents were patently decent well-meaning souls with all the right motivations. In other hands, though, one shivered to think how such a radical course of 'treatment' might be employed.
And the outcome was predictable: at five, Hayley was, presumably, sufficiently emotionally and physically malleable to learn the 'correct' responses. She 'improved' at home but once back at school, carried on fighting: 'two steps forward, one step back' reported her mother. Unsurprisingly, Sergei lapsed immediately. Nobody knows about the first four years of Sergei's life (not even Sergei, who has 'forgotten'), but surely any doctor who prescribes treatment for a patient without knowledge of their medical and psychological history is potentially in violation of the code of medical ethics?
This was enormously distressing television and I remain entirely ambivalent about whether Horizon should have given Federici the airtime without also carrying a warning.
In comparison, Fertility Tourists came as light relief. Here we met the Mastertons, the grieving parents of four sons whose only daughter had died in an accident, and who were now wanting selective fertility treatment to ensure another female child - a procedure outlawed in Britain. To Italy then, where sixtysomething would-be mother Jenny has also been seeking a child. Back in 1992, she was the subject of a documentary in which her Italian doctor was confronted by a pre-peerage Robert Winston, questioning the ethics of assisting post-menopausal women with conception.
Jenny, a mildly eccentric retired zoologist, had no doubt it was the right choice, despite the fact that she seemed only to have noticed the lack of a child in her life when it was far too late to have one by normal methods - perhaps it was when she'd stopped working with animals? I couldn't help feeling that if maternal yearnings kick in when you're about to pick up your bus pass, one should probably just shrug and visit Battersea dogs home. Either way, Jenny's treatment has been unsuccessful, even though she says she'll probably still be at it when she's 70 - 'well, why not?' No, Jenny, not 'why not?' but why?
Unlike Jenny, the Mastertons could only afford one shot - and it failed. Or rather, though successfully fertilised, the result wasn't female, which was as good as a failure in this case.
Though one sympathised with the couple, the lesson seemed to be that four healthy sons could be more than enough children for anybody. Fertility Tourists followed another couple, too - from the Middle East to Harley Street - but their story was entirely dull for the simple reason that, being Muslims who were in defiance of religious law, their faces were necessarily hidden. As Cleese had reminded us, it's very hard to engage with people whose faces you can't see, never mind those who speak only through an interpreter. For all we knew the couple were cracking jokes, but without the close-ups of joy and grief, even the most potentially heart-string-tugging documentary comes across as dry as a medical text.
More mad medics, manipulatively-tugged heart-strings and desperate 'our-baby-heartbreak' plots than you could poke a thermometer at in ER, including a premature birth and the resultant breathing doll fighting hopelessly for its spooky little plastic life.
Oh and I had intended to review Crossroads (the creaky old 'brand' has been revived as a robust and bustling four-star hotel for no reason other than that soapland's holy grail is the cloistered co-dependent community and we've got enough squares, streets and hospitals already) but, frankly, how many emergency resuscitations can one survive in a week?
