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Welcome to the World of Weight Loss

Welcome to the World of Weight Loss

Wed Aug 21, 9-10pm, BBC2

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From radical feminism to dog walking, director Vanessa Engle is capable of bringing her own unique sensibility to bear on almost any subject. Utilising a mixture of gentle humour, kindly but insistent probing and occasional flashes of bleak, profound insight, her trick is to always ask one more question. What lies behind our obesity epidemic? Are we literally hemmed in by cheap, crap food? Is overeating a mere symptom of a set of deeper societal problems?

Engle explores these questions obliquely by focusing on a few individual Weightwatchers. There’s a certain wry jollity in the musical selections (‘Big Girls Don’t Cry’ anyone?) and Engle never ladles on the melodrama. But soon the sadnesses, even pathologies behind these stories begin to reveal themselves. How does someone get to the stage where they’re eating 30 deep-fried chicken wings in a single sitting? Never po-faced and eventually, all the more affecting for it, this is another worthy addition to Engle’s impressive documentary canon.
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