Short abstract
BBC 1, 1 to 15 October at 9 pm
Rating: ★★★
Robert Winston has developed his television career beyond the wildest dreams of previous media doctors. First appearing in powerful human interest documentaries, rooted in his specialty of obstetrics, he has now transmuted into a TV icon. Introducing this, his latest three part series, Winston said he was going to take us to where no TV doc had been before, to "the final frontier" of medical science, "the human mind." But hold on a minute, what's an obstetrician doing talking about the brain? Has Winston strayed too far from his home turf? Would this series be his final frontier?
Figure 1.
Has Lord Winston strayed too far from his home turf?
Until recently, television tackled medical science in a pretty formal way. In the 1970s, in The Body in Question, Jonathan Miller worthily analysed the history of medicine with a renaissance intensity. Since then, we have had numerous episodic medical documentaries of the talking-head-boffin variety (for example, in the BBC's long-running Horizon series).
In the past few years however, television has become more daring and less deferential towards our stock-in-trade. It is no longer enough to show what doctors have to say about patients and their conditions. Now, it is de rigueur to be entertained by the doctor, the patient, and the condition itself. So, with the latter, the wizardry of special effects allows us to whoosh down gullets and cascade through neural networks.
There seems to be almost no limit to how far people are prepared to go to get on television, even if it means being accompanied by cameras into the privacy of a consulting room. And in Robert Winston, the small screen has discovered an entertainer with gravitas. And a moustache. Adding a measure of serious authority (Saddam is reputed to have learnt this notion from Stalin), the hefty black moustache is also, unashamedly, part of Winston's performance. We see—and surely here the incongruity is deliberate—a professor who is also a peer who is quite happy to do his own stunts and even look ridiculous, as long as it delivers an informative, scientific message. Perhaps it is no coincidence that Robert Winston is an obstetrician. In this age of play-it-safe ratings paranoia, canny BBC programmers have discovered a professional whom they know their audience will trust. Lord Winston delivers (literally).
There is no denying the slick production of this latest series. We started with a heart-thumping representation of a synaptic cleft—a stunning gorge in an exotic, highland location—that our hero bravely straddled by means of a rope. The rope's consequent development into a prefabricated bridge deftly illustrated the principle of neuronal facilitation, which shifted neatly into the real life story of a 43 year old housewife who wanted to become a midwife. Robert spelt it out, to her and us, that if she wanted to achieve this, she was going to have to "physically restructure her brain."
Subsequent development of this theme, in the first programme, covered possible avenues for the amelioration of such processes (omega 3 fish oil trials in sluggish school kids). We then learnt how the brain programmed (and rewired) its motor cortex even by the visualisation of complex movements and how we could train our memories to absorb capacious lists of trivia. Finally, Winston the neuroscientist started to transform (before our very eyes) into Winston the neuro-psychoanalyst, by explaining possible cognitive processes that might underlie subconscious memory.
The two subsequent programmes were equally entertaining and informative, covering such issues as the development of personality and how dysfunctional elements of personality could be altered in adults by psychological intervention. I was also instructed how to read faces and how to lie more convincingly. There was even psychohistorical analysis of a certain meeting in 1938, explaining how Hitler's superior mind reading (and lying) skills led to devastating international conflict.
Not bad for 60 minutes of prime time, especially when you look at the competition. This month, for example, the same channel is going to be treating us to the delights of Celebrity Dog School. I don't think Robert will be on it, but, in The Human Mind he was shown pondering by a pond, having a brain-wave, and then walking off with his dalmatian, all to demonstrate the cognitive benefits of relaxation. Maybe this isn't his final frontier—maybe it's only the beginning.