It seems not a day goes by that doesn’t see new medical research released that contradicts previously received wisdom. You only need seven minutes of exercise a day; nope, you need 90 minutes of exercise a day. Red wine is good for you; red wine causes cancer. And so on. It’s confusing and completely unhelpful.
If, like me, your Google search history reveals a random batch of medical-related questions – “Is walking enough exercise?” “Is this this lump normal?” “Pain right-hand side on back?” – then a show that sets the record straight on such matters could be just what the doctor ordered.
Enter Ask the Doctor, an ABC TV series that explores common health problems – such as sleep disorders or weight issues – in an entertaining and informative way. But is it too entertaining? It’s certainly not as voyeuristic and strange as Embarrassing Bodies, but when dealing with complex medical issues, entertaining storytelling can come at the expense of nuance.
Each episode in the 12-part series covers one topic – including exercise, pain, obesity, sleep, allergies, alcohol and genetics – presenting information via a mix of experiments, graphics and interviews with experts and patients.
The choice of topics is good. Pseudoscience can make supposedly simple stuff like exercise, sleep and weight loss extremely confusing, and it’s great to have something that cuts through the noise.
The presenters are all new faces to television and it’s refreshing to see the ABC employing new talent rather than recycling familiar faces. Dr Renee Lim, Dr Shalin Naik and Dr Sandro Demaio are young, telegenic and from diverse backgrounds, but most importantly, they are actual doctors who straddle the divide between research and clinical experience: Lim is a general practitioner, Demaio is a public health expert and Naik is a medical researcher.
They are also appealingly fallible. Naik gets treatment for his loud snoring in the sleep episode and Lim admits to having suffered depression in the exercise episode. Tuesday’s episode – number eight in the series – is all about genes, with Naik having his sequence mapped to find out what health problems that might indicate.
Since the axing of the ABC’s Catalyst, there has been a gap in science programming on the national broadcaster – particularly rigorous scientific content that goes deep. Ask the Doctor goes partway to filling the gap, but the approach is a bit once-over-lightly. With a lack of science programming on television and the dearth of quality science reporting elsewhere (see the disappearance of some health and science reporters in the latest round of Fairfax redundancies), I’d like the programming we do have to treat as us like adults.
Ask the Doctor presents information in bite-sized, entertaining chunks. In the alcohol episode, for example, one scene about how alcohol is metabolised is set at a boozy lunch. In another scene, viewers are asked to tweet in how much they exercise or drink and the tweets are displayed on screen. It’s all good fun but it feels very gimmicky and obvious. The experts interviewed are introduced by their specialty but also by their hobbies (coaching their daughter’s soccer team, for example). Perhaps this is meant to humanise them, but as a viewer I found it annoying rather than entertaining.
Most adult attention spans are longer than the producers of this show give us credit for. And the material explored needs greater depth and nuance to really enhance our understanding of the topics. It’s almost as if they think spending time explaining the complexities of something without rapidly cutting to another scene will make the audience bored.
That said, I learned a lot from the episodes I watched. The obesity episode involved a visit to Ararat, where weight-loss show The Biggest Loser was filmed. Lim interviewed a former Biggest Loser contestant who could only maintain her weight loss by doing around three hours a day of exercise. At a time when it seems like everyone has a miracle diet to peddle, Ask the Doctor reminds us of the unglamourous truth: maintaining weight loss is a lifelong slog, and hormones play a role in keeping us hungry, thereby hindering weight-loss success.
Despite the interesting topics and informed and sympathetic hosts, I can’t shake the feeling this show is trying too hard. It doesn’t need to. Dial down the gimmicks and present the tested, proven, scientific information that we so desperately need.
• Ask the Doctor is on ABC TV Tuesdays at 8pm, and available any time on iView
