Take my child genius, please?

Last night's TV reviewed: Take Child Genius; Indiana Jones: the True Story

On Channel 4 last night, we watched a rat being dissected and were given a knowledgeable commentary on its anatomy. Which might not sound all that remarkable – except that our anatomical guide was an eight-year-old child. Gifted youngsters (or, to be more precise, exceptionally gifted children whose parents didn't tick the "no publicity" box) have long been a TV staple. The cunning twist with Take Child Genius is that it promises to follow them into adulthood. Yesterday’s four subjects ranged in age from three to 11, and none, it’s fair to say, lacked intellectual confidence. Yet, as you might expect, the programme was at least as much about their parents as themselves.

Now, I know that I should be concentrating on Adam, who spends quality time with Mummy dissecting those rats, or Mikhail, who can add 8,192 and 8,192 faster than you can blink, but I keep getting distracted. We were told at one point, for instance, that Peter's father "has given up his job as an artificial-limb painter". And immediately I found myself thinking, "Can't we see a documentary about that? And can it really be true that it's a big sacrifice for Peter Sr to have stepped off the limb-painting ladder? How high can you go in the field of prosthetic aesthetics?" And when we were shown the MP Michael Mates, harrumphing indignantly about a letter that Peter Jr, had written to him about his problems with the local council, I found myself wondering what tortuous calculations of political advantage he'd gone through to conclude that he could safely insult a constituent on camera. Can't be rude about small children, he would have thought, but on the other hand, viewers may think he's a clever dick... so perhaps I'll get away with it.

Actually, Peter – once you peel off the layers of acquired bumptiousness – seems to be quite a nice little boy, and certainly better than you might expect of a child who has to carry the weight of an entire family's ambitions. He didn't throw a tantrum when his anticipated triumph at a European chess championship failed to materialise (he came 67th out of 91, which was around 66 places lower than he'd been aiming for). He just went very quiet and looked as if he needed a hug. Which his father, still doing post-match analysis on the last game, conspicuously failed to give him. That's another distraction. What you're interested in here isn't the children, most of whose achievements are dully quantifiable. It's the parents, many of whom insist on the fact that they wouldn't dream of pushing their children but don't then explain who it was exactly who put in the application papers for Mensa.

It can be a hard world too. Mikhail used to enjoy the title of youngest-ever Mensa member but has recently been bumped by Georgia, who joined before she reached her third birthday, and will presumably now start scooping the appearances on Oprah and Countdown. Georgia's mother, Lucy– a woman who apparently sees her daughter not just as a genius, but as a possible Messiah, told us that Georgia is in a constant state of disappointment at human meanness, and “depending on what you believe about auras, a lot of pictures of her have white light around her”. Lucy also emphasised that “we haven’t pushed Georgia in any way”, although she did alert the press when the girl (presumably not off her own bat) broke the Mensa membership record. Although parental adoration is hardly the worst crime in the world, you sense that it might be toxic when insufficiently diluted. When Mikhael was first tested, his precocious maths abilities weren't matched by equivalent verbal skills, so his parents immediately put him on a remedial coaching programme and arranged a fund-raising spellathon so that he could show off his new skills in front of the local newsmen. Don't know how it is with these people who aren't pushing, but the non-pushees still seem to end up at the front in all the pictures.

Given the long-term nature of the project, it was probably wise that the makers let all this (and plenty more like it) pass without much comment. Nor did they ask any of the parents such questions as “What on earth do you think you’re doing?” They were pretty generous as well to the programme’s resident expert in gifted children, Professor Joan Freeman – despite what appeared to the inexpert eye her tendency to tactlessness. At one point, for example, Professor Freeman was brought in to measure the IQ of six-year-old Samuel, who clearly felt overshadowed by his brother, Adam (the one with the rat). With both boys present, she boomingly informed the parents that Samuel “did a lot better than I think you would have expected from what you said”.

But, of course, the professor was informing us too – and this public aspect is where the whole enterprise, however undeniably interesting, perhaps feels a bit uncomfortable. Many viewers last night will surely have wondered if these children might benefit from not being held up as geniuses all the time. Unfortunately, now they’re signed up for years to a TV series called Child Genius, that prospect seems unlikely.

Meanwhile, you definitely didn’t need the IQ of a genius to realise that Five’s Indiana Jones: the True Story was a work of desperate stupidity. Jones’s creators, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, have always said (and not very controversially) that he’s a purely fictional character. Last night’s documentary, though, decided for no discernible reason that this couldn’t possibly be the case, and set off instead to find the real-life adventurers he must be based on.

In fact, the stories of Andrews and Rahn could have made for interesting documentaries in themselves. Sadly, the sense here was that they were always being distorted to fit a thesis that was both unnecessary and entirely unproved. (At no point, for instance, did the programme even attempt to show that Spielberg or Lucas had heard of either man.) You also know a programme’s in trouble when the only thing it establishes for sure – and quite proudly – is that “the Nazis” in the Indiana Jones films were based on a German political party of the same name.