Morgan Spurlock, creator and star of the spurious but entertaining movie documentary Super Size Me, is trying his hand at a TV documentary, as his new series 30 Days is aired in America.

Spurlock was nominated for an Oscar for Super Size Me (DVDs), in which he ate nothing but McDonalds three times a day for a month. Despite the gimmicky premise, the documentary highlighted a bigger problem with the way the western world eats.

The new documentary 30 Days follows a number of people as they try to live in a certain way for, um, 30 days.

In the pilot, Morgan Spurlock and his nutritionist girlfriend Alex Jamieson try to live on minimum wages for a month. In America, that’s $5.15 an hour – about £2.57.

Spurlock and Jamieson can’t afford furniture, and even simple things
like bus fares cause them great consternation. To counter this,
Spurlock exhausts himself by taking a second job, pushing his
relationship with his girlfriend even further to the limits.

The first episode of 30 Days is the only one that Spurlock actively takes part in. Some of the other episodes seem a little more like Wife Swap, where people are sent to go and live with people that are their diametric opposites.

We already know that a Christian spends a month in the company of a family of Muslims, and the producers have been casting for gay people, so it’s fair to assume there’ll be some homophobes around the corner, too.

A television format like this lives or dies by the personalities
that are shown. To get the message across to as many people as
possible, the characters need to be as engaging as possible. Early reviews
say that Spurlock is precisely that, but as he takes a back seat
through the remaining five episodes, he leaves a lot in the hands of
his subjects.

However, genuine non-sensationalist social experiments like this are
becoming increasingly rare, so this looks like a show not to be missed.

There are always issues to be made with people like Morgan Spurlock
- like the fact he’s getting rich from pretending to be poor – but at
least he can raise problems in an entertaining way. That’s half the
battle won.

30 Days is broadcast on FX every Wednesday night.

[story by Stuart Heritage]