Tell Me What You Really Think review: Marc Fennell leads surprising new health series

Marc Fennell has been having a good run lately. He’s fronted series that explore the legacies of colonisation (Stuff the British Stole), the genetic diversity of local communities (The Secret DNA of Us) and faced down the tough questions on a game show (Claire Hooper’s House of Games… okay, the questions weren’t that tough). Now he’s hosting dinner parties on the new SBS series Tell Me What You Really Think, and like all good dinner parties, things are set to get a little rambunctious.

The idea behind Tell Me What You Really Think is straightforward. Each of the four episodes has Fennell at the head of a dinner table. Around him sit five opinionated Australians united by nothing beyond the health condition they’re there to discuss. Across the hour, they’ll be telling their stories, tackling misconceptions, sympathising with each other and occasionally getting stuck into the wine.

Who’s coming to dinner?

Episode one takes on the tricky subject of ADHD. There’s a quick intro – it’s a condition that’s everywhere; people might be over-prescribed drugs for it; and Fennell discovers he may have symptoms and looks shattered – and then it’s dinner party time. The guests are Noongar woman and prison reform advocate Rocket Bretherton, clinical psychologist Daniel Jones, ADHD Australia board member and ad exec Andrew Thompson, true crime podcaster Emily Webb and Alone Australia winner (and fish farmer) Krzysztof Wojtkowski. The menu? Well, there’s poke balls to start.

There’s also fortune cookies that contain ADHD symptoms and the guests have to say whether they describe them or not. Turns out everyone likes putting off difficult tasks, has mystery bruises, has 50 tabs opens on their web browser, isn’t a fan of making their bed, keeps burning their food and has trouble keeping their focus when they’re having sex.

Read: The Secret DNA of Us review: 4 Australian towns take ancestry tests

If these symptoms feel a little broad, Fennell’s got you covered. In part, this episode is a takedown of the misconception that everyone has a little ADHD. The guests rapidly get to the darker and more extreme side of dealing with it. As one guest puts it: ‘It’s like having 20 television channels going on in your head and they’re all equally interesting.’

The format feels a little gimmicky at first. This is the rare television show with on-camera meals that’s not all that interested in the food. There isn’t a lot of the back-and-forth of an actual conversation – for the most part, Fennell asks questions and the guests answer them – but the result still holds up as an engaging and fairly freewheeling look at each topic.

Sometimes things do get a little prickly. Episode two, which focuses on weight loss and the use of drugs to control weight, has a moment where a couple of guests have talked up the amazing results they’ve had on variations of Ozempic. Then the cost comes up and it’s not cheap; ‘sounds like a rich person’s drug,’ says another guest and the temperature drops a few notches.

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Fennell steers confronting discussions with empathy

While the guests all have their own stories, Fennell isn’t just sitting back and steering the conversation, though sometimes his personal link to the subject is a little tenuous. In a later episode about aging, Fennell’s stake in things is simply that he isn’t getting any younger. Fortunately, the guests are there to help guide him towards a destination he can’t avoid.

There are real connections made too. The ADHD episode gets personal for Fennell and the conversation around weight has him dredging up his own story of fluctuating body size in a way that suggests he’s actually getting something useful out of the chat.

They’re not really moments of high stakes drama – nobody’s telling him he only has six months to live, which is a relief – but it does bring home the universal nature of these issues and make it clear that no matter how they might be built up or glossed over by the media, they’re simply part of life.

The dinner party format really just lends an informal appearance to what is, for the most part, a series of fairly structured chats, but Fennell is a warm and engaged interviewer. The mood often feels close to the tail end of a party, where a few people are left and the small talk is done with.

A format that lets regular people talk at length about issues that affect them is a rarity on our screens. Whatever your interest in health, this is a meal worth sinking your teeth into.

Tell Me What You Really Think airs weekly from 14 October on SBS, with all episodes available to stream on SBS On Demand.