TVScope: Seduction School - Size doesn't matter, Channel 4, Thursday, August 3rd, 9pm
To seduce means "to lead astray, especially by false promise". The claim in the title of this the first episode of Channel 4's new three-part series on the "Shape of the Nation" dealing with our obsession with how we look, was therefore already suspect. This suspicion was borne out by the programme content.
Dave (6ft 6in), Adrian (5ft 2in) and Neil (27 stone) are introduced as men who feel their appearance stops them from having girlfriends. Wayne and his sidekick, Johnny, two American "seduction gurus" who claim they can turn any man into a babe magnet, take the men on as pupils for one week.
It quickly becomes evident that all these suave creepy gurus have to offer are techniques and jargon more suited to dodgy second-hand car salesmen than suitors. Picking up women is "the game", women "the target" and success depends on proper "approach", "statement of intent" and "close". "Nice guys don't get women" is one of the gems shared with the pupils.
The three men are set loose to practise seduction skills on unsuspecting women in public. Their lack of success is then cruelly contrasted with the guru's, in which the time it takes to get an attractive woman to give him her phone number is the measure of success.
The instruction in creepy techniques continues with the pupils being shown how to touch ("kino" in seduction jargon) before moving on to making a "statement of intent", in which they have to use the word sexy at an early stage to make their sexual interest clear.
"Sexy and caring" is the best that Dave blurts out when his target tells him she is a doctor. In one of the most cringingly patronising scenes of the programme, the gurus, despairing of their pupils' lack of progress, bring them to a bingo hall to practise talking to women they don't want to pick up, before progressing to pretty girls.
It was painful to watch the men's genuine loneliness and longing for an intimate relationship reduced to puerile sexual conquest in a way that brings reality TV to a new low.
The men have varying degrees of success because, of course, size does matter, and the men are repeatedly described as physical misfits and misshapen. Adrian and Neil need a different kind of help and support than the tricks of a pick-up artist. Adrian, who is also physically deformed as a result of rickets, is very socially competent with his many women friends, and more insightful than his mentors that he is more likely to develop an intimate relationship with one of these women than by picking up a stranger. For the sensitive, baby-faced, 22-year-old Neil, help with losing weight and losing his garish Hawaiian shirts would have been more useful than being taught how to "kino" strangers. It is Dave, who has only his lack of confidence to overcome, who ends up most like his obnoxious mentor Wayne.
In the end it appears that the series title, Size Doesn't Matter, is no more than a ruse to get a seedy programme on seduction into the schedule on a quasi-serious hook.
This programme was, however, less about the seduction of women than about the seduction of Neil, Dave and Adrian, who were led astray with the false promise that becoming a good pick-up artist was the route to happiness.
Olive Travers is an clinical psychologist.