Doctor in Your House, Channel 4 - TV review: Did the doctors have to be so patronising?
The White family's lifestyle was of course concerning. Even their dog was too lazy to run for its ball
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Your support makes all the difference.Take Embarrassing Bodies, mix it with its less squirmish off-shoot Supersize vs Superskinny, add a pinch of Gillian McKeith's You Are What You Eat, and you are somewhere close to Channel 4's new show Doctor in Your House.
Starring the good-looking Dr Xand van Tulleken, whose suave bedside manner is similar to Embarrassing Bodies' Dr Christian Jessen, the show sees the GP live with a typical British family to diagnose those lurking health problems we're all too in denial to see a doctor about.
Like You Are What You Eat, which has been off the box for eight years, Doctor in Your House was hilariously naff. Dr Xand didn't go as far as spreading the family's weekly grocery shop across the kitchen table, but he did have an accomplice to monitor the White family's faeces.
It was hard not to laugh after Dr Ellie asked mum Nicky, “Was that difficult for you?” just seconds after her spell on the loo. Or when dad Dylan sat topless at the dinner table holding up his moobs as Dr Xand warned his beer belly was “alarming”.
The White family's lifestyle was of course concerning. Even their dog was too lazy to run for its ball. And it doesn't take much to realise your hair may be falling out because you're only eating chips, crisps, burgers and biscuits all day.
But the way the doctors spoke to the family often seemed patronising. It was as if they were the head teachers rapping the naughty Whites over the knuckles for their bad behaviour. We were meant to be on the side of the doctors criticising the Whites for their irresponsible lifestyle, but it was hard not to find fault with the GPs as well.
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