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July 19, 2005 Volume 41 Issue 26

TV doc on location

When psychiatrist Irvin Wolkoff is asked to be an on-camera advisor for a TV show, he takes the gig to help others and to boost the TV image of his profession — but getting out of the cold and into the tropics didn't hurt, either

By Irvin Wolkoff

Late in February I received a call from Stonehenge Media Group, a company making a six-part series called Prenup Challenge for Vision TV. On the show, three therapist "experts" would give three engaged couples some serious preparation for a successful marriage through instructive exercises and demanding challenges on an unspoiled tropical island.

One of the experts had left the show suddenly and a replacement was needed urgently. The first episode was scheduled to be shot in three days' time. After a lightening round of messages, test shoots and interviews, I agreed to take the gig. I liked the idea of appearing on TV as a competent and helpful psychiatrist as opposed to one of the usual TV-shrink suspects: useless nerds, wing nuts, charlatans and cannibals. A big draw, though, was 10 days of production in the Commonwealth of Dominica, where daytime temperatures hover around 30Ëš C. In the grip of our third consecutive hard winter in Toronto, the only possible answer to Stonehenge's invitation was: "Yes . . . Oh, yes."

Dominica, with the emphasis on the third sylable, is not the Dominican Republic. It is the most recently independent island in the Caribbean chain, situated between Guadeloupe and Martinique. It's a stunningly beautiful place of volcanic mountain covered with unspoiled rainforest, studded with tall waterfalls, bejewelled with limpid pools and hot springs, and criss-crossed with rivers—365 of them— one for every day off the year.

It's hard to turn around and not see something beautiful in Dominica. Flowers you've only ever seen at an expensive florist's grow up or hang down from every conceivable surface. Clouds kiss the tops of lush verdant mountains with rainbows for embellishment, and cliffs plunge down to pounding surf below.

The ubiquitous rainforest bears no resemblance to the mucky jungle of the African Queen. Biting insects are rare on the island, and there are no venomous reptiles here. Instead, an endless supply of delightful creatures appeal to all your senses. The regulars are tiny red-breasted black finches, translucent golden coquì "peeper" frogs, bright yellow crabs with red and black trim, and the ubiquitous geckos. Unusual sightings during my stay included a peacock and a horse (that walked into a camera shot), and a feral cat.

The Prenup Challenge therapists and production staff were based at the Jungle Bay Resort. As the name implies, this retreat-style cluster of hewn-plank cabins on stilts sits on a jungely mountainside above a dramatic Atlantic cove. The feel is upscale adventure camp. My first hike to my cabin had me convinced I might not be up to the adventure. With long pauses and deep remorse for my sedentary lifestyle, I schlepped up some 200 steep steps and eventually arrived at my jungle abode. (By the end of a week, I was capering up that path like a seasoned, if senior, mountain goat.)

In my cabin I found a telephone, a tiny refrigerator and filtered hot and cold spring water. There's no TV, but guests are more usefully entertained in the yoga studio, spa, beach bar and dining pavilion.

In his cabin, one of our audio technicians found a gecko. Attila Laszlo shared a granola bar with the little lizard, which proceeded to follow him around their shared living space (including into the shower) for the rest of our stay on the island. Attila named him Dave, and the two developed an unusually close relationship. Word is that on our last night in Dominica, Dave came to Attila with a big green katydid in his jaws and a tiny tear on his cheek. (It could never have worked out. Attila's married.)

The Dominican people enchanted me from the moment I arrived on the island. I stepped out of a small propeller-driven aircraft from San Juan, Puerto Rico, into a warm welcome from a concertina-led four-man band and a smiling Auntie dispensing hugs. It turned out that the music and greetings were intended for someone else—we had been mistaken for delegates to a world youth conference—but everyone just kept on dancing. The treatment was typical of what we got from Dominicans over the next 10 days.

The drivers and production assistants for Prenup Challenge included some surprises. One was a pharmacist, another an award-winning producer of broadcast documentaries, and several were talented writers and musicians. Their various callings didn't stop them from capitalizing on Dominica's new-found role as a big lush sound stage. With Prenup Challenge and the sequel to the Pirates of the Caribbean movie, which was shooting there in April, a fledgling industry has been launched. With luck and media money, the local economy will get a vigorous boost without turning the island into another Miami Beach.

Besides admiring the place and its inhabitants, the "experts" had work to do on Dominica. Fellow "expert" Sharon Ramsay, a registered marital and family therapist with a master's in divinity, was new to TV but you wouldn't know it from her warm, direct on-camera style. Sharon is astonishingly sensitive to other people and has a knack for identifying strengths in a relationship. With her sound academic underpinning, Sharon shows couples how to put what they've got to good use.

Completing the therapeutic triangle was Rebecca Rosenblat, known to her radio and print audience as "Dr. Date." Her explicit and unabashed focus on sexuality added some spice, a nice complement to Sharon's delicate touch and my more clinical perspective (which got me tagged with my wife's favourite sobriquet for me, "Dr. Doom.")

In the end, the real stars of Prenup Challenge are the engaged couples. These six people allowed us to put them through a variety of intense exercises and challenges including jungle hikes and tricky treks to non-existent destinations. We even "disappeared" their drivers on the way to a strictly time-limited challenge. Their efforts made for entertaining television against a beautiful backdrop, but it didn't end there. These six achieved new insights into how they experience and respond to closeness and used their new tools to improve their relationships. Therapists like that.

Vision TV and Stonehenge Productions have made a good show and done some good along the way. And I got warm for a while. "No bad 'ting, Mon."

Prenup Challenge premiered July 11 on Vision TV and runs on Mondays at 8:30 p.m. EST and 1:30 a.m. EST. For more information, log on to www.visiontv.ca/ Programs/lifestyle.html. For more information about Dominica and the Jungle Bay Resort, see www.junglebaydominica.com

Irvin Wolkoff is a Toronto psychiatrist and the wine columnist for the Medical Post. He has hosted six TV series, some made in really cold places. This time he got lucky.

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