TV Health:It's a sign of the times that the New Year resolutions' industry no longer focuses on cutting out bad language, promising cartwheels to be on time for work or signing pre-natal agreements to keep your room tidy.
Nowadays, everybody's 95 theses is nailed firmly at the door of health and fitness and, as has become the norm, television producers keen to tap into our need for restitution, while saving us from the road to perdition, are churning out New Year health and lifestyle fixes as often as we've had Christmas Day leftovers. So zappers at the ready, here's a rundown of what's on offer.
January sees the return of RTÉ One's popular How Long Will I Live(Wednesday, January 3rd, 8.30pm) featuring doctor in the house Mark Hamilton. He takes eight new unfortunates with lifestyle issues through the healthcare makeover-garage for a service, oil change and new timing-belt that will hopefully add years to their existence.
This year's programme includes a 35-year-old workaholic teacher who's a heavy smoker with an addiction to caffeine; a 46-year-old farmer with too many social commitments; a 24-year-old civil servant who needs to moderate her party lifestyle; a stressed-out priest; a 57-year-old B&B landlady who fears her family's cardiac history; and a 20-year-old overworked student with Crohn's disease.
Elsewhere The Afternoon Show(Monday to Friday, RTÉ One, 3pm) has its regular health slot every Monday. Varying contributors answering the questions of the day, while there's nearly always something from herbal medicine to healthy eating throughout the rest of the week.
Other highlights to look forward to include a new season of Families in Trouble, which is due back around March, with psychologist David Coleman putting families on the psychologist's couch in an attempt to correct everything from prehistoric parenting skills to teenagers with tantrums.
Lifestyle makeover adventures include a new series, The Great Escape(January 8th, RTÉ One, 9.30pm), which explores how four Irish families get on when they up sticks and move abroad in search of that missing je ne sais quoi.
The first programme follows the Casserley family - Ger, Eimer and their children - who left Swords in 2004 for a new life in France. Regular viewers of Househunters in theSun - where the idea for this show derived - will remember the family and Ger in particular, who had a cunning plan to set up a pitch 'n' putt business in rural Bordeaux.
Channel 4's big offering this January is the return of Gillian McKeith's You Are What You Eat: Gillian Moves In(Tuesday, January 9th, Channel 4, 8pm), a new eight-part series featuring Britain's most savage boot-camp diet-detective as she bullies another lump (the collective noun for fatties) of desperate cases living the fat life.
The new series has an added dimension as the stool-inspector moves in and slums it with her desperados - eating, drinking and sleeping the McKeith magic so to speak. One wonders if the current batch of guinea-pigs supplement their diet with McKeith's Fast Formula Wild Pink Yam Complex (for women) or Fast Formula Horny Goat Weed Complex (for men), the two sex additives that the Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Authority (MHRA) recently removed from the market.
Other Channel 4 highlights include 10 Years Younger(Thursday, January 11th, 8pm), a new 10-part series that aims to beat the January blues by offering hints on sexy new wardrobes and a buyer's guide to the January sales. The first programme also takes a look at Bev Hawkins from Suffolk, whose age was guessed as 61 by 100 people who were polled. She is in fact 48.
Tourettes de France(Thursday, January 11th, 10pm), a one-off documentary, follows a group of young tourette sufferers on a road trip to France with actor and comedian Keith Allen.
Meanwhile, over at the Beeb Children of Helen House(Tuesday, January 9th, BBC2, 10pm) is a harrowing documentary charting two families' stay at Helen House - a centre set up 24 years ago by the visionary Sister Frances Dominica, to provide respite and end-of-life care for children with life-shortening conditions.
Seen through the eyes of the families and carers, the documentary provides an extraordinary insight into those helping children and young people to live fully until death strikes, while helping their families to live on.
The Madness of Modern Families(January 16th, BBC2, 8pm) deals with the issue that parents are becoming obsessive in their quest for their children's welfare. The first programme examines the pressure of managing the perfect children's party.
As part of BBC3's coming of age season, The Baby Borrowers(January 8th, 9th, 11th and 12th, BBC3, 10.30pm) is a social experiment that observes how five teenage couples cope temporarily with the crisis of parenthood. As part of the same season, Fatboy to Slim - The Jack Glassett Story(Tuesday, January 9th, BBC3, 9pm) is a three-year study of a 16-year-old, 21-stone boy who, after numerous diets hears the chilling consensus that his morbid obesity will eventually kill him. So he goes to America to have gastric band surgery.
And finally, The Truth About Food(Thursday, January 11th, BBC2, 9pm) is also a new series that reveals the science behind what happens after we eat our food. The first programme takes a look at probiotic vegetables, the Evo diet and how to reduce cholesterol and blood pressure without using drugs
With this much healthy telly, all you need now is to install a gym in the television room.
Reviews by Paul O'Doherty