CHANNEL 4 has opted to axe a controversial reality show following backlash from its launch.
Around The World in 80 Weighs, which aired in 2024, followed six medically obese participants as they travelled around on a fact-finding mission to learn different cultures’ secrets to weight loss.
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The series was hit with criticism, particularly around the show’s ads, which often featured confectionery.
Now, according to Daily Mail, Channel 4 has opted not to bring the show back for a second season.
“Around The World in 80 Weighs caused a stir with critics and its audience, but while Channel 4 had originally commissioned it for one series, there was scope for it to be brought back with a new batch of participants after they established the show’s format,” they said.
“The series being parked is reflective of changing audience habits where programmes remotely reminiscent of noughties hits that created a shame culture on other people’s lives and their struggles for entertainment purposes is widely shunned.”
Across the five episode series, the participants travelled across Japan, Texas, Tonga and India to try weight loss treatments.
This also included discovering diet secrets, and experiencing the different cultural relationships to food in both positive and negative ways.
In one uncomfortable scene, the group are seen being laughed at on the streets of Tokyo by onlookers.
The group visit the Japanese city after it’s revealed the country only has a 4% obesity rate, compared to the UK’s 25%.
Participant Marisa is seen telling cameras: “It just blows my mind that you’re not allowed to be who you are and you just have to fit it.
“I don’t feel like I should be here. In this country I don’t feel comfortable, and for me personally, it isn’t somewhere I would come back.”
After that, the group moved on to Tonga, which has one of the highest obesity rates in the world.
After meeting a woman who at 28 weighs 47 stone, and another who had lost both her legs, members of the group were reduced to tears as they feared they would die.
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