TV: My Fake Baby

Channel 4's recent documentary about Reborns, a product that's not widely known about (until now, anyway) but which has a surprisingly large and dedicated community around it. Reborns are essentially dolls that look and feel (when done well) exactly like a young baby. Don't go calling them "dolls" or "fake babies" to those who make and enjoy them, though, as they don't take especially kindly to it.

It's a tricky area to cover. It would be all too easy for the filmmakers to paint the women who buy these reborns as mad or weird, but instead they take a more hands-off approach, showing them in a balanced and sensitive way and allowing us to draw our own conclusions. The film takes a fairly broad view of why people choose to get these reborns too, from a woman who has several that she likes to dress and take out, to another who wants a replacement (for want of a better word) for her grandson who now lives in New Zealand, via a woman who makes them and another who has a collection of dozens. There's also their partners, who invariably take a fairly dim view of such things.

The film doesn't go into much detail on the wider scope of the reborn community -- there are dozens of people who make them, mostly selling on eBay as either pre-made or made to order; there's even a guild of reborn creators. But rather than tackle the intricacies of this the film focuses on the more interesting human aspect -- what leads these women to want a reborn, and what is the pleasure they derive from it? Despite C4's usual shock-doc titling, it's an appropriately made look at an interesting emerging phenomenon.