Honey We're Killing the Kids!

This is a real TV show shown in the UK (BBC 1 tonite, actually). And it's hysterically alarmist.

The set-up is simple. Two parents are taken into a big room where the show's presenter, some psychologist woman, tells them their kids are too fat/lazy/unhealthy, and eat/smoke/watch TV too much. Then she shows them a CGI animation of their kids - and what they will look like when they are 40. Which, as you'd expect, is hideous, and even their expressions are angry and sad.

The psychologist lady then says, "You're KILLING your kids." At which point, the mother usually brakes down in tears.

Seriously, this is a real show.

The kids then come in, AFTER the scary future pics of them are gone, and the family are given instructions as to what to do over the next three weeks to SAVE THEIR FUTURE.

The parents come back after three weeks of following the show's instructions, and get to see a new version of their kids at 40 - looking ridiculously healthy and cheerful.

It's my favourite TV show, it's laugh out loud funny and ridiculous. It's also quite disturbing though. Not only does it show just how lame UK parents are these days, but it's got a real 'Do as we say or your kids will die' tone.

Last time I checked, the Nazis didn't win the second world war - not that you'd sodding notice. After all, the Third Reich was pretty big on issuing orders and demanding cold, robotic obedience from the populace, and that's pretty much what we're saddled with today. But the way the orders are delivered has changed. Instead of being barked at in a German accent through a loudhailer, they're disguised as concerned expert advice and floated under your nose every time you switch on the TV or flip open a newspaper There's a continual background hum, a middle-class message of self-improvement, whispered on the wind.

"You eat too much. You eat the wrong things. You drink. You smoke. You don't get enough exercise. You probably can't even *beep* properly. You'll die if you don't change your ways. Your health will suffer. Have you got no self-respect? Look at you. You sicken me. I pity you. I hate you. We all hate you. God hates you. Don't you get it? It's so sad, what you're doing to yourself. It's just so bloody sad." That's the mantra. And it goes without saying that the people reciting it are routinely depicted as saints. Last year, the media dropped to its knees to give Jamie Oliver a collective blow job over his School Dinners series, in which he campaigned to get healthier food put on school menus. Given the back-slapping reaction, you'd be forgiven for thinking he'd personally rescued 5,000 children from the jaws of a slavering paedophile.

Anyway, the series was a huge success. In fact in telly terms there was only one real drawback: it wasn't returnable. After all, when you've saved every child in the nation from certain death once, you can't really do it a second time. The only solution is to find a new threat, which brings us to Ian Wright's Unfit Kids (Wed, 9pm, C4), a weekly "issuetainment" programme in which the former footballer and renowned enemy of grammar forces a bunch of overweight youngsters to take part in some extra-curricular PE.

It's essentially a carbon copy of the Jamie Oliver show, with more sweating and fewer shots of pupils mashing fresh basil with a pestle: an uplifting fable in which Wrighty shapes his gang of misfits into a lean, mean, exercising' machine - combating apathy and lethargy, confronting lazy parents, and attempting to turn the whole thing into a nationwide issue that'll have Range Rover mums everywhere dampening their knickers with sheer sanctimony in between trips to the Conran shop. Oh isn't it simply terrible, what these blob-some plebes do to themselves? Not our Josh you understand: he eats nothing but organic spinach and attends lacrosse practise six hundred times a week.

Bet he does, the little sh1t yes, it is heartwarming to watch flabby, inconvenient kids transforming themselves with a bit of simple activity... but there's something about the underlying eat-your-greens message that really sticks in my craw, in case you hadn't guessed.

What happened to the concept of CHOICE, you *beep* So a bit of jogging might increase your life expectancy - so what? That just equates to a few more years in the nursing home - whoopee do. And besides, I'd rather drop dead tomorrow than spend the rest of my life sharing a planet with a bunch of smug toss ends trying to out-health one another.

In episode two, video games and the internet are singled out as villains in the war on flab: they make kids too sedentary, you see. Oddly enough, TV, which is equally sedentary, and unlike those two activities, actively encourages you to let your mind atrophy along with your physique, escapes without a rollicking. Funny that.

Well listen here, Channel 4 - instead of forcing kids to eat bracken or do squat-thrusts, how about teaching them to think more expansively, so they reject the sly, cajoling nature of programmes like this? Or would that be a campaign too far?

Although I feel a little sad writing a review for this programme, never mind even looking it up, I just wanted to say how glad I am that it was made. People who say this kind of programme is stupid obviously haven't seen it or think it makes them uncool if they do. This is ridiculous. Even "Wife Swap", a similar programme, has lifestyle benefits. Seeing a middle aged woman who obsessively cleans and nags non-stop, or who is prejudiced towards people who don't have a big house, 3 cars and white sofas do a complete u-turn to become a woman who is more open minded and craves more from life, produces quite a pleasing feeling. In "Honey..." the parents of children who are overweight or have potentially damaging dietary habits, see a picture of their children progress from their age now to age 40 based on tests done on them by the show's people. The visual results are more often than not shockingly hideous for a parent to behold (yet ironically usually almost a mirror of the parents) They are then spurred on to change their kid's futures for the better. They are usually successful. I think this programme is a good idea because its a public way of making the masses think more about their children and the damaging and beneficial effects of food. I don't think we should go over the top with making lots of programmes in this area, the best things would be for parents to actually do it themselves and pass those skills and knowledge on through the generations, without shock tactics. But hey, its a start.