Michael Mosley: Just One Thing, review: cheerful, achievable advice in his final series

The TV version of Mosley’s popular health podcast shows how good he was at giving easy-to-follow tips to boost our wellbeing

4/5
One of the great things about Just One Thing (BBC Two), the final series from the late Dr Michael Mosley, is that its recommendations feel achievable. With the best will in the world, I am not going to eat 30 plants a week or drink kefir for breakfast. 
Mosley understood that we don’t all have tons of willpower, time or enthusiasm for joyless endeavours. This two-part television special, which now also acts as a tribute to the presenter who died earlier this year, is based on his popular podcast that extolled the benefits of yoga, reading a poem, gardening and listening to music. Happily, I can manage all of those, and you probably can too.
The first episode was, admittedly, slightly jolting: having a cold shower. Only for 30 seconds (doing it for longer is not proven to be any more beneficial), and you are allowed to work up to it by starting at 10 seconds and gradually getting braver. He enlisted as his guinea pig a lady called Jayne, a busy single mother of two children who, understandably, described herself as “permanently slightly knackered”. 
Mosley provided the gentle encouragement and humour that made his approach so winning. Never one to shy away from making himself look daft, he sat in an ice bath in the back garden with a rubber duck, aided by his wife, Clare. He encouraged Jayne to enlist some friends to join her in the challenge, and to take things further by going wild swimming and water tubing, both of which made a cold shower seem tame by comparison. 
Certainly, the cold showers made them feel more energised. Beyond that, the science was slightly hazy: a study of 3,000 people found that those who did it every morning for 30 days reported 29 per cent fewer sick days but correlation does not imply causation, etc. Still, with the important proviso that this shouldn’t be tried by those with cardiac issues unless doctor-approved, it seemed like an easy win as a way to boost wellbeing. I’m trying it tomorrow.