The Great – Channel 4

The Great had me under its spell immediately, the cheeky footnote to the title promising an “occasionally true story”. It’s a playful comedic satire of power, gender roles and royalty set in 18th century Russia, from Tony Mcnamara the co-writer of Oscar-winning The Favourite and reminded me in equal parts of The Personal History of David Copperfield and Channel 4’s rip-roaring The Windsors. Which is certainly no bad thing.

Nicholas Hoult embodies the young Emperor Peter III, who has found the right kind of woman to marry. She’s from a French aristocratic pedigree but her family is out of favour, languishing in financial dire straits. Elle Fanning is Catherine, who looks beautiful, which is really all an Empress needs to be, but she’s intelligent and cultured too, keen to be a good wife and to share in the ruling of Russia.

Catherine has barely set foot in the palace before she meets Adam Godley reveling in his role as the revolting ArchBishop. In a shocking scene, he accompanies her into her bedroom and licks his fingers as he talks about checking her “interior wall”. With the comforts of a  gilded palace life comes a number of dreadful indginities, as Catherine is about to find out. Oh and by the way, the wedding is at 7pm sharp.

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'Horizon: Clean Eating – the Dirty Truth'

Sometimes the BBC’s flagship science programme serves up a well-timed piece of investigative journalism, and this was a doozy. Dr Giles Yeo is a geneticist studying obesity at Cambridge University, so is well placed to investigate ‘clean eating’, a recent diet craze and social media sensation. He nicely separates fact from fiction in the bizarro but strangely attractive world of green juices, spiralized vegetables and Instagram meals.
Dr Yeo is a bit of a superstar, with a calm demeanor in the face of utter nonsense and appalling pseudoscience. I would not want to play him at poker. He looks super cool driving a Mustang around America. His style reminded me of Louis Theroux; he’s very kind to nutters. He is measured and thoughtful;  willing to engage and break bread with crazy people (although of course not actual bread – it’s got the twin evils of gluten and grain in it and it will KILL YOU DEAD!!) He seems patient and doesn’t get riled easily. I’d just want to shout, which sadly doesn’t have the desired effect on idiots. He on the other hand is happy to listen and then explain with empirical and measurable data exactly why your claims are nonsense.
The first person he meets is food writer and clean-eating superstar Deliciously Ella (seriously, I’m not about to accept advice from anyone with a cutesy baby name, on any subject, ever). Her cookbooks and philosophy seem like entry-level woo. It’s largely sensible advice about diet – eat more fruit and veg, eat less processed stuff, cook from scratch more. However she then claims she cured a rare illness she was suffering from by making changes to her diet. This big change to her diet seems to have worked for her, and good for her. But what works for one person may not work for another. In fact, a radical change in diet may be significantly unhealthy if you discount your doctor’s advice and just work by what’s popular on the internet or what looks pretty on Instagram. Can you see how easy it is to slip into nonsense?
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