Program Highlights 1 Kevin McCloud's Man Made Home 1

Making Couples Happy :)

The hit ABC TV series, Making Australia Happy, proved that science can make individuals happy in just two months. Now, MAKING COUPLES HAPPY is raising the stakes. Can it also work for couples? Four ordinary Australian couples embark on a confronting and challenging eight week journey to happiness and relationship fulfilment. Two weeks into the eight-week experiment and the experts focus on the couples' communication styles - both verbal and non-verbal. John takes the couples to an archery range. This may seem like tempting fate, but he wants to show them how focusing on the positives rather than the negatives pays dividends in both archery and relationships. Desiree lines up an unorthodox communication lesson for Alison and Paul in an Aikido studio, where they learn that the principle behind the martial art - 'yield to win' - is also at the heart of successful relationships. But when Desiree discovers that it's a challenge for Alison to even hold Paul's hand, the scale of the barriers the experts face becomes clear. Paula and Steve are shocked to learn from Anna-Louise that 85% of all communication is non-verbal, and they put the research to the test by identifying happy couples randomly from their body language, and discovering their secrets for a happy relationship. As the couples receive their scores four weeks into the experiment, some have increased, but others have taken a tumble. The next four weeks will be crucial to their future happiness. http://abc.net.au/iview/

MAKING COUPLES HAPPY :) is an Heiress Films, Screen Australia documentary program, developed and produced in association with Screen NSW, and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Producer: Jennifer Cummins Executive Producer: Daryl Karp Series Director: Phil Kemp ABC Commissioning Editor: Karina Holden
Thursday

9:30pm

The Midwives

This episode of The Midwives follows three trainees at St Mary's Hospital, Manchester, as they embark on the daunting task of learning to become a midwife. The three-year training is tough and before the students qualify, they have to clock up 40 births under supervision. Then suddenly they are on their own with no one to turn to. Eighteen-year-old Chloe is a first year student midwife starting her placement on the high-risk delivery unit. She has only just done her A-levels and moved out of home, but she is wide-eyed with enthusiasm about the wonders of childbirth and the challenge of exhausted, fed up mums. It is not long before she faces the more nerve-wracking and intimate milestones of her first vaginal examination and 'catching' her first baby at a caesarean section. Twenty-year-old Aurelie is struggling in her second year and has one more chance to pass a vital assessment. If she fails, it is unlikely she will ever become a midwife. Her mentor Leslie scrutinises Aurelie's work for a week before making the decision to pass or fail her. Aurelie's dream of returning to Congo to be a midwife is in danger of ending. Jess, at 22, has just completed her three years' training. On her first shift in the blue uniform of a qualified midwife, she realises that the buck now stops with her. In the life and death dramas she encounters, her decisions are now her responsibility alone. More than anything, Jess wants her first normal birth as a qualified midwife. But on the high-risk delivery unit of St Mary's Hospital, it is unlikely to be a straightforward one. http://abc.net.au/iview/

6 X 60 minutes. The Garden Productions.