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Biggest Loser: Transformed – but less interesting: Why Channel 10's show is in trouble

Have we got bored with watching people lose weight?


BIGGEST LOSER: TRANSFORMED
★★★
Monday-Thursday, 7.30pm, Ten

Weight loss as a spectator sport is in trouble. Less than half a million viewers tuned in to watch the re-launch of what was once a ratings magnet for Network Ten, its decade-old slimming competition The Biggest Loser. Ranked 17th, it was beaten by Nine's Travel Guides and Seven's family rom-com 800 Words. In the reality stakes, people preferred Nine's Married At First Sight, which was No. 1. This week it was dropped from Sunday nights, replaced by Modern Family.

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It wasn't supposed to be this way. Rebranded after a year's hiatus as an improved, enlightened version of its former hardcore self, Biggest Loser: Transformed speaks to viewers fed up with extreme stunts and weight-loss goals that we know are rarely sustainable beyond the controlled environment of the compound. Gone are the tough-love trainers, humiliating food challenges and contestants that tipped the scales at more than 200 kilograms. In their place are sympathetic coaches, kindly chefs and no one over 150 kilograms. One young mother weighs 78 kilograms, a goal weight that previous contestants might only have dreamed about.

So what went wrong? Are we simply bored with the obesity message? Or, by toning down, has the show lost its propensity for schadenfreude? Perhaps it's that grossly overweight people make most of us feel better about our own eating habits. People who are simply "on the slide", encourage a closer, uncomfortable look at ourselves.

In the same week that the series returned, Fairfax reported that being overweight is the new norm, and that fewer of us are trying to do something about it. According to the report, the people least likely to try to lose weight are those teetering on the edge of obesity. Being plump is no longer seen as a reason to change.

Blame for this shifting attitude towards body shape might also be attributed to the slowly but steadily increasing visibility of larger people on television. When Casey Donovan won Australian Idol in 2004, her size attracted as much attention as her voice. This year on I'm A Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here!, the girth of her and fellow contestant Tziporah Malkah barely rated a mention at the water cooler. Hotter topics were racial prejudice and the stamina of an ex-Bachelor villainess. Newer reality shows such as Gogglebox and Travel Guides are full of jolly round folk. And MasterChef is happily oblivious to some of its participants' partiality to their own cooking.

Australia is yet to cast a fat person in a dramatic leading role. Even on Foxtel's prison drama Wentworth, the main protagonists are at least fit, if not airbrushed with makeup. Sure, some Neighbours veterans are not the waifs they once were but they don't tend to get the most exciting story arcs. ABC courtroom drama Newton's Law, which just wrapped its first season, starred a slim woman (Claudia Karvan). The bumbling comic-relief character was played by the average-sized Georgina Naidu.

Meanwhile, drama made in Hollywood, that most holy of shrines to the impossibly svelte, is representing bigger people, and not just in supporting roles. Sitcom Mike & Molly, starring Melissa McCarthy and Billy Gardell, is a hit because of its relatable leading couple. In NBC blockbuster drama This Is Us, the morbidly obese Kate (Chrissy Metz) enjoys equally prominent storylines about her weight, her family issues and her relationship.

And maybe that's ultimately why The Biggest Loser appears to have run its course. As we become more accepting of the fact that we are getting collectively heavier, we are looking past the bulge and at the person. And if all that person has to talk about is their weight loss journey, well, that's not anyone's idea of entertainment.

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