Band leader

10:39am Tuesday 13th January 2009

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (five, 9pm); Extreme Slimmers (ITV1, 9pm).

CSI’s Gil Grissom (William Petersen) is at the newstand when the call comes through – there’s an injured officer in the alleyway round the corner.

One of his team, Warrick Brown (Gary Dourdan), has been shot. He’s not quite dead. Grissom cradles him in his arms, his shirt turning red as the blood flows from his fallen colleague’s body.

Soulful music plays on the soundtrack as the camera views the scene from overhead and gradually retreats from the murder site like someone realising they’re intruding on private grief.

He loved you, another colleague says to Grissom, once they’re back in the office.

I loved him, says Grissom in reply. As you can tell, CSI is not its usual flashy, showoff self as the series returns with the aftermath of the shooting of Brown.

We know a bent cop did the dirty deed and it doesn’t take the forensic-happy tecs long to work out the same thing. You can tell they’re upset because they talk in whispers with meaningful pauses to denote emotional turmoil.

Still, it’s not a bad way to go for an actor leaving a series that’s in better health than Brown. CSI shows no sign of suffering from fatigue or over-exposure.

With Petersen himself due to leave later this season, the series will have to survive another, hopefully less bloody, departure.

The format, I suspect, is strong enough to withstand the loss of a man who’s been at the helm since the start.

Extreme Slimmers is yet another of the endless conveyor belt of programmes about fat people fighting the flab, but still manages to elicit a few cries of disbelief.

One comes when Colin Corfield appears.

He was 60 stones at his heaviest and 48 stones last time the cameras focused on him (using a wide angle lens, presumably). Excessive eating and failed diets left him trapped in his bedroom, unable to even wash and dress himself.

He opted for a gastric bypass to limit the amount of food he could eat. Three years later, he’s a changed man, the sight of which prompted me to stare openmouthed and utter a Victor Meldrew-like statement: “I do not believe it.”

You wouldn’t recognise him – which isn’t surprising as he’s lost a staggering 45 stones.

HE’S still not happy. His skin, which stretched to accommodate supersize Colin, now hangs off him like an unmade bed. He opts for a series of painful cosmetic operations.

After the first bout of cutting and slicing, his surgeon shows us a jumbo-size flap of skin the size of a small dog. Weighing one stone, it needs two people to hold it up.

Sam Evans lost nearly 20 stones through weight loss surgery. She runs a support group for people who’ve going through similar situations and is forever stripping to her bra and knickers to show her scars.

What I didn’t realise is that having a gastic band fitted – take note, Fern Britton – isn’t the end of it. They need lifelong maintenance, having to be adjusted from time to time like a belt on your trousers.

Some overweight people insist they’re fat, but happy. Michelle doesn’t believe them. “They’re not, they’re living a lie because it’s a miserable life,” she says.

As well as physical adjustments, people have to sort themselves out mentally. Losing weight isn’t the end of it. Michelle tried every way to lose weight naturally.

She failed. Then she had a gastric band fitted and lost ten stones in two years.

That wasn’t enough. She had a gastric bypass. She still has a troubled relationship with food, saying it’s hard work not giving in to temptation and eating as much food as she used to.

She makes up for not eating by keeping up appearances with Botox injections, having her hair dyed regularly, and having nail and make-up treatments. As a result, she’s found a new partner and is pregnant, something she thought would never happen.

That brings its own problems. She must eat for two now. As a result of weight loss surgery, her body doesn’t process food in the same way. Now she must double her food intake while she’s pregnant. This time, though, she won’t mind getting fat.