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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