KEY POINTS:
They're the fattest people in the world, 50 stone men, 40 stone men. Some tip the scales at Half A Ton.
Half a tonne is a lot. Half a tonne is the stuff of freak shows, which is what you'd think a series called Half Ton Hospital
- following the progress of the fattest people in the world - would deliver.
I don't want to watch freak shows and anyone who does should book themselves into a hospital. But the real surprise is that Half Ton Hospital (last night, 9.20, TV2) is (mostly) an in-depth and thoughtful, almost tender, look at the residents of Brookhaven Hospital in New York.
I say mostly and almost because the assumption is that people do want to watch freak shows, do want to sit down with their groaning trays in front of the telly and say, "Oh my god. Look at that! That's disgusting!" while stuffing their faces.
So the narrator tells us a number of times that Brookhaven is "controversial", that "failure means death", that the hospital is home to"the massive and the grotesque". All of which is undoubtedly true, but those parts of the narration are at odds with what is really a simply and quietly told story about sad people.
As docos about sad people go, and despite those shouty, sensationalist attempts, the characters of this story carry their own stories with dignity. They are not, and so neither are we, in for the quick fix.
This is not a make-over show. Death is, you suspect, waiting not far off in the wings of this hospital.
Brookhaven doesn't sell anything but hope, but it is hope hard won and you suspect that it battles not just with obesity but with ideas about obesity.
That to have an eating addiction is disgusting and those who allow themselves to get so fat deserve all they've got coming to them, and that doesn't include help. But also that their patients have not only to battle their addictions to food. But to a fat nation's addiction to those quick fix make-over shows which promise
that if you get your stomach stapled all your dreams will come true.
Brookhaven and its manager, the mild-mannered and likeable manager, Robert Kolman, offer only free will and hard work. They feed their patients and try to get them to exercise and they give them therapy. The laughter workshops look loopy but these people have probably forgotten how to laugh.
The diet on offer is a strict 1500 calories a day and that is part of the controversial aspect. The makers of the doco bring into Brookhaven a British nurse who works
with obese people and disagrees with such strict calorie restrictions for people, a quarter of what many of them have been eating. And a British man who used to be fat before he had his stomach stapled. I'm still not quite sure what the purpose of importing these two is. I hope it's not to impose a false sense of friction and drama because none is needed.
The answers to the controversial methods will reveal themselves without the intrusion of the outsiders. Why does the hospital allow, or at least do little to stop patients ordering in food?
Why does it give bed space to a man who has refused for four years to leave that bed to do the prescribed exercises? Should the man who lost 18 stone and 11 months later put it all back on again be given a second chance and a bed in a hospital people beg to be admitted to?
And it could be that there are no answers - and that would make this interesting piece of documentary making truly controversial.
