“This is about as responsible as programmes about overweight people get.” Read on for the full verdict on last night's TV.

Georgia's Story: 33 Stone at 15, BBC1
“The sweet thing about Georgia's Story was the way that it confounded your cynicism. You braced yourself for an explosive collision between homesick teenager and American therapeutic homilies, for a litany of self-exculpating excuses, for depressing setbacks when Georgia returned home for the Christmas holidays, and then, slowly, you unbraced yourself again, as it became clear that sticking power and character certainly weren't among Georgia's problems.”
Tom Sutcliffe, The Independent

Georgia's Story: 33 Stone at 15, BBC1
“Georgia's very nice, and this is about as responsible as programmes about overweight people get - no underwear shots, gratuitous wobbling, putting them in with skinny people or slicing them open - but I'm still not convinced by weight loss as TV. I know I'm the only person in the world who isn't: you just need to glance at the schedules. We're a nation obsessed with food and eating and weight and, most of all, with fat people.”
Sam Wollaston, The Guardian

The Hospital, C4
“The duty of art, television and experience is to extend the scope of our imaginative sympathy. If only that were as much fun as sneering, which I fear is what most of us sat down to do for the third and final instalment of The Hospital. This is the documentary series that contends that the problem with the NHS is its violent, drunken, sexually irresponsible and, last night, obese young patients. It followed three fat young women who wanted that latest thing, a gastric band, because, you know, exercise and dieting just didn't work for them.”
Andrew Billen, The Times

The Hospital, C4
“It's the final part of Channel 4's glum series about how the National Health Service is being bent to the point of breaking by the fecklessness of modern society. The Sun would have headlined this story, ‘Lying Fatties Crushing the NHS', because it dealt with a consultant who specialises in the surgical insertion of willpower, also known as a gastric band.”
Tom Sutcliffe, The Independent

The Hospital, C4
“It's pretty shocking, and symptomatic of our quick-fix culture, that the three people in this film want to have serious operations that will leave them unable to eat normally ever again, in order to lose weight. One of them wants one so that she can look better in her wedding dress. Who cares that she'll only be able to eat baby food, through a straw, for the rest of her life; at least there'll be a nice photo of her on the mantelpiece.”
Sam Wollaston, The Guardian

Drinking with the Girls, BBC3
“Cherry Healey, who's not averse to the odd tipple herself, wants to know what drives other women to the bottle. So she hits it with a whole bunch of them, of varying ages, from teens to grannies. [ ...] hats off to Cherry for throwing herself into the job and everything, but she ends up on the bathroom floor, with her head down the loo, retching. Charming.”
Sam Wollaston, The Guardian

Drinking with the Girls, BBC3
“In theory, this was quite a worthy subject. In practice, it meant Cherry going out on the lash with several different groups of women, and occasionally why everyone was quite so out of focus.”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express

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