You the Jury: Richard Bradley and Alannah Richardson

BBC3's Make My Body Younger

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Richard Bradley and Alannah Richardson review the latest TV shows.

Take the basic ingredients of Honey, We're Killing the Kids, add flavouring of Gillian McKeith, a dash of Autopsy Live, put it in the blender and, hey presto, you have Make My Body Younger.

The show couldn't decide how cruel to be to binge-drinking, chain-smoking Emma. A presenter/undertaker ushers her into a "live autopsy" - only it wasn't an autopsy, just an elaborate health check. Some cool but largely unexplained graphics of her organs are projected on her body suit. Then, still trying to scare her to death, this 23-year-old is told she has 45-year-old lungs, prompting likeable Emma to utter the classic line: "My lungs are older than my mum."

In the second half the producers become her new best friends. A nice trainee GP settles down into the dull, worthy stuff of getting Emma healthy - nicotine patches, porridge and walks with the dog.

At least by the end, Emma seems to have stopped gorging herself. I hope it was worth her taking part in this pig's breakfast of a -programme.

"Porridge can be good for you" is the theme of Banged Up too. Ten ne'er-do-wells do time in a TV prison experiment in "tough love". It is presided over by real screws, a tough prison -governor and David Blunkett.

The lads are a sullen lot - but there are some good moments. One lad blames the show for "reducing him" to reading a book for the first time in years. But this "real TV experiment" can't cope with their all too real problems of addiction. Next week the lads have some new cellmates in their bunks - hard as nails ex-cons. Should be interesting.

Just when you thought every lump of concrete and steel had been scoured in pursuit of an angle on 9/11, along comes this, The Conspiracy Files: 9/11 - the Third Tower. Yes, there was a third tower - Tower 7. It seems everyone has tried to bury Tower 7 because, so the conspiracy goes, it was the HQ from which the 11 September attacks were orchestrated.

This programme is taut and stylish, with a credible cast of protagonists. A member of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth is convinced the tower has all the signs of a controlled demolition. But in the end it is the conspiracy itself that gets demolished. Still, it was fascinating to rake over the rubble.
Richard Bradley is joint managing director at Lion Television

The premise of Make My Body Younger is to take hapless young people - in this case Emma - and do a live "autopsy" (obviously without actually cutting them open: a step too far even for BBC3). Fabulous graphics show Emma's internal organs and, shock horror, we discover that, rather than 23, her heart is 35 and her lungs are 45.

Actually, this is a pretty informative show and Emma does seem to be shocked into changing her life. The graphics are great but I could do without incredibly shouty presenter George Lamb. Presumably, young people now have ears that are the biological age of a 90-year-old.

Ten days and 10 young trouble-makers get to experience what prison is really like. Banged Up is one of those rare programmes that wants to make a difference, and the producers should be lauded for this. The pace is slow, but it works by mirroring the life of prisoners locked up for most of the day.

The prison is patrolled by real prison officers who wander around looking just the right side of tough. Theirs was a voice I missed and I'm hoping that later in the series we get to hear their stories, as it looks a pretty thankless job.

When making Out of the Blue: a Poem for 9/11, I was astonished at the amount of conspiracy theories that seemed to crop up on the net concerning the destruction of the World Trade Centre. The Conspiracy Files: 9/11 - the Third Tower investigates one of these theories; that the third tower was deliberately blown up by the American government.

There are some good interviews, including Barry Jennings, the last man to be trapped in the tower. The graphics of how the tower collapsed are clear and the archive used well. It is also good to see reconstruction kept to a minimum - mainly poor old Barry running up and down the stairs a lot.

The problem with the film, for me, is the lack of real human interest. Previous films about 11 September, which tell the stories of people trapped in the towers, the jumpers and survivors, are just far more gripping than a conspiracy theory off the internet.

But congratulations to the producers who, told that the BBC had lost vital news footage, discover that, Indiana Jones-style, it had been put on the wrong shelf in a vast BBC warehouse. Wonderful!
Alannah Richardson is executive producer at Betty