TV Scope:The Panic Room BBC3, Tuesday April 10th, 9pm
BBC3's new psychological we'll-cure-your-phobia series takes two people with various levels of irrational fear, and heals them over the programme's duration, like Mr Saville once did it on Jim'll Fix It.
In the first programme we were introduced to Danni Hawkins - "It's the F-word. I can't even say it . . . (pause) . . . it's FROG." Her phobia, batrachophobia, was matched by Sharon Newton's felinophobia. "I can't stand cats. Wherever I go, cats zoom in for me," she said.
We also met the programme's two resident psychologists: Dr Lucy Atcheson, one of London's leading phobia, anxiety and confidence-building counselling psychologists, and Felix Economakis, a consultant psychologist and master practitioner in neurolinguistic programming.
This one-hour programme could have been edited down by about 20 minutes by losing various build-ups, the brash intro, lights coming on and off and doors slamming. The idea takes the two phobics back and forth through a custom-built panic room, that's something of a cross between The Crystal Mazeand the prisoner recreational facilities on Guantánamo Bay.
Inside the brightly-lit, windowless, nowhere-to-run structure, the phobic stands on a designated spot while various images are flashed on big screens a few feet away. Obviously, in this first programme, the images were frogs and cats, first stationary and then with a lot more movement and menace, which had both participants in tears, until some gentle psychological coaxing helped them face their fears with varying results. Watching the poor unfortunates was enough of an ordeal to unnerve the best of us.
In the course of the episode, it transpired that Hawkins, as a child, had disturbed a colony of pond frogs who retaliated by jumping out of their habitat and frightening her. She was of the opinion that maybe the phobia was the frogs' eternal revenge.
Newton's felinophobia was a little more understandable - in that cats aren't beloved by everybody - until we realised that her life was dominated by her phobia, so much so that coming or going to work each day necessitated her husband or best friend making surveillance checks that there were no cats in the area.
Over the course of the three-day therapy, the two women lived together. Gradually, cats and frogs were introduced to their living-space to help them come to terms with their fears until, after more sessions in the panic room, which got more intense as the programme progressed, and further counselling, both miraculously overcame their phobias, getting to the stage where Hawkins could pick up a toad and put it in a pond, while Newton was able to take a cat on a lead for a walk.
While the cures seemed a little fast-tracked and the phobias television-ised, the results were impressive. The series continues tonight featuring ophidiophobia (fear of snakes) and ichthyophobia (fear of fish).
Review by Paul O'Doherty