By FIONA RAE
New drama Nip/Tuck (TV2, 9.30pm) has about as much to do with plastic surgery as Ally McBeal had to do with law, says a New Zealand plastic surgeon.
The over-the-top show, which features sex, surgery and swearing, usually in that order, starts tonight.
There's been controversy in the US,
not only over its depiction of plastic surgery but because of its graphic sexual content and violence. The Parents Television Council urged advertisers to boycott the show, and claimed 11 advertisers withdrew.
Nip/Tuck did, however, receive two Golden Globe nominations and plenty of critical praise and became the most-watched basic-cable show in the US, even beating Queer Eye.
The chair of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons called Nip/Tuck an abomination and said it had no realism at all - a view similar to that of John de Waal, president of the New Zealand Foundation for Cosmetic Surgery.
"I don't think it's got a lot to do with plastic surgery," says de Waal. "Certainly the way it's portrayed in such a frivolous way, it comes across as a bit of a cowboy operation and I guess surgeons would like to distance themselves from that aspect of it."
The series stars Julian McMahon and Dylan Walsh as long-time friends with their own practice in Miami. McMahon's character, Christian Troy, is an insincere playboy who regularly picks up women so he can bed them one night and operate on them the next day.
Walsh's character is the nice guy, but he is in an apparently loveless marriage (his wife is played by Joely Richardson) and he is struggling with performing possibly unnecessary surgery (the opening scene features a "butt implant").
There's more to the characters than surface impressions, of course, especially the hints of Troy's abuse as a child, and that's one theme of the drama: outer beauty may be easy to achieve, not so inner beauty.
It's the apparently instantaneous nature of the depicted surgery that concerns de Waal. He says some people have a perception already that they can walk off the street and have a procedure done straight away.
"Surgery is a serious business and people need to check out their surgeons, make sure they're well credentialled and understand that surgery isn't something that you walk in and take lightly, and neither is it something that your surgeon takes lightly."
At the end of the day, Nip/Tuck is just a TV programme, says de Waal, and is out to shock.
"Cosmetic surgery shows are all the rage in the States and if people are seriously interested in debating ethical issues like the place of plastic surgery in society today, then a drama set around two plastic surgeons that's designed with a completely different point in mind isn't a vehicle through which to debate those issues."
De Waal chuckles at the suggestion in Nip/Tuck that being a plastic surgeon is a chick magnet and doesn't think the characters could ever practise in this town: "I think they'd have serious trouble with the Medical Council."
Will he be watching it again?
"My curiosity might get the better of me. I wouldn't be watching it for the surgical content."
By FIONA RAE
New drama Nip/Tuck (TV2, 9.30pm) has about as much to do with plastic surgery as Ally McBeal had to do with law, says a New Zealand plastic surgeon.
The over-the-top show, which features sex, surgery and swearing, usually in that order, starts tonight.
There's been controversy in the US,
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