TV Review: Katie Price – Making babies

Former glamour model and self-made businesswoman Katie Price wants a baby. Having created a version of herself that lives in the alternative world of reality TV, milking everything from cosmetic interventions to the challenges of bringing up a family of five children, it was only a matter of time before she struck a deal with Channel 4 which, one can only assume, paid for her IVF attempt with her then fiancé Carl Woods.

At 45, and 11 years older than Carl, Katie knows that the odds are poor. We quickly find ourselves at the Agora Clinic in Brighton, where IVF specialist Dr Carole Gilling-Smith explains, kindly but firmly, that the odds of Katie being able to produce viable eggs are vanishingly small.

The journey that follows is the subject of this three-part programme, Katie Price – Making Babies. Part documentary (the IVF science is explained and illustrated with crystal clarity by the Agora staff), part fly on the wall reality TV (the scenes filmed at Katie's house, surrounded by her children) and some lively exchanges between Katie and Carl as they embark on a gruelling programme of follicle stimulation, egg retrieval, fertilisation using ICSI and embryo transfer. These scenes mirror the stresses and strains most couples undergo when having fertility treatment, but the presence of cameras transforms even low-key exchanges into unsubtle dialogue.

Katie and Carl are the opposites of the silent, nervous and deferential couples I remember from my times in fertility treatment waiting rooms. At 45, and aware she's 'pushing her luck', Katie is mildly outraged at the prospect of menopause within a year. This is almost understandable; as a celebrity, she has constantly and successfully turned herself and her body into commodities, in the process providing a very comfortable life for her large family.

Her plastic surgeries are routinely documented (and paid for by third parties). Even as someone whose menopause came in my teens, I couldn't bring myself to feel indignant at Katie's glorious sense of exceptionalism or even her apparent need for one more baby when she already has five children ranging from nine to 23. She has not got as far as she has by listening to other people's unsolicited opinions; there must be a (lucrative) method in the chaotic madness of the media circus surrounding her.

Katie, at the centre of all this drama, comes across as steely yet insecure. Aware of the age gap between herself and her house-proud, egg-cooking fiancé, she seems to believe that a baby is the answer to the cracks in the relationship. It is obvious to the viewer that these two are not particularly suited; Carl, sometimes deeply sensible, is at other times child-like (eating hard boiled eggs in the car in front of a nil-by-mouth Katie prior to her embryo transfer, displaying both an insensitive side and a questionable commitment to low-end station forecourt snacks).

What the programme does very successfully is showcase some of the issues in fertility knowledge that some of us, who have lived and breathed all things assisted conception for a large part of our lives, often take for granted as absolute folk wisdom. When Carl mentions his decade of body building steroid use and the effect this had on his sperm count during those years, we understand that a large section of the target audience might be grateful to have this pointed out.

Similarly, the discomfort of follicle stimulation therapy and the effect of hormones on mood is very much not glossed over by Katie, whingeing and snapping at her hapless fiancé who, also unacquainted with the notion of stiff upper lip, takes out his frustration by cracking yet more eggs in a frying pan for the family's breakfast. Did the producers, spying a long-winded metaphor, encourage this? Either way, some viewers will learn something, even if it's just an insight into the household's protein-rich breakfasts.

Katie's children, some too young to be willing participants (her sweet, socially avoidant son Jett springs to mind) are enlisted as courtiers in the whole narrative. 'Would you like a new baby brother or baby sister?' she asks, prematurely and unfairly, long before an embryo transfer has taken place. The older children are at least capable of deciding to take part in the programme (16-year-old Princess Andre, focused on a career in the media, receives some handy exposure during the programme).

Without wishing to spoil the ending, it's fair to say the IVF journey does not end well and fizzles out at the beginning of the third and final instalment. This presumably left the producers scrambling for filler content (a visit to Harvey, Katie's profoundly disabled son's residential school is one such segment; another is a Q and A session on makeup with herself and Princess, held in Edinburgh).

Overall, I was unsure about the message of the documentary, which had some good information about IVF from the clinicians but was undermined by a central relationship that lacked warmth, charm and humour and forgot the importance of mutual understanding and support during stressful times.