Netflix's Wellmania: A humorous dive into the world of wellnessGreen juice, microdosing, cupping and cocaine? Netflix's new show wellmania encounters all manner of wellness tropes.
by The Conversation
29-03-2023 15:42
in Entertainment
Quick fixes for our health don't exist.
Image by Netflix
Review: Wellmania, Netflix.
--
What does it mean to be well? Wellmania, inspired by Brigid Delaney's book of the same name, attempts to answer this question.
Liv (Celeste Barber) is stranded in Australia after losing her green card, desperate to return to her job in the United States. After failing the necessary medical exam to apply for a new card, Liv embarks on a journey to get well .
And she's going to do it in four weeks.
--
The show dives into the world of overconsumption of all kinds: food, drugs, sex and, eventually, wellness. Wellmania is a show where a glass of orange juice can't be presented without a comment about the vitamin C content.
ALSO READ: Stylish and healthy homes: Wellness design trends for 2023
Liv's health (or apparent lack thereof) is never presented in terms of her weight; instead, her have it all lifestyle is constantly critiqued by her friends and family.
--
You cannot, it turns out, have it all - if the all is a functioning career, family life, and copious amounts of cocaine and alcohol.
Throughout the eight episodes of this mini-series, Liv encounters all manner of wellness tropes, from green juices to vaginal crystal eggs. We are taken on a journey with her to cupping massages, watching intensely attractive people glistening on exercise bikes, to a nude session with a sex therapist.
Her journey is never presented as the clean, soft and beautiful acts of wellness we see on our Instagram feeds. Instead, it is hilarious, sweaty, vomit-covered, and has fallen so far off the wagon we are left wondering if she ever actually got on.
In the words of Liv: Fuck diet, fuck exercise. All I need to do is starve myself and have my colon rinsed out.
Quick fixes for our health don't exist. Netflix Wellmania shows us in no uncertain terms that while many of us crave quick fixes for our health, no such thing exists. It is quickly apparent Liv's wellness extends beyond what she puts in her body (or up her nose). We see a complex relationship between friends, family and coming home.
This is, of course, coupled with all the humour of returning home and turning into an adolescent version of yourself when you are around your adult sibling. There is nothing quite like being 39 and flipping off your younger brother behind your mum's back.
ALSO READ: 7 wellness tourism hotspots to experience in KwaZulu-Natal
WHAT WE MEAN WHEN WE TALK ABOUT WELLNESS Wellness is a part of our everyday vernacular. We see it on our Instagram feeds, in news headlines and in a recent trend in publishing.
Self-help books, keto diets, green juices and ways to get well are promoted everywhere.
Wellness meant something distinctly different when the word first became commonplace. The history of the word wellness dates back to 1961, with medical doctor Halbert Dunn's book High Level Wellness.
Dunn's definition of wellness relies on an individual's ability to function to their maximum potential physically, mentally and emotionally.
Today, wellness' is a multi-billion dollar industry. Netflix Dunn's work inspired physician John W. Travis to create the world's first wellness centre. Travis believed health is not the absence of disease, but an ongoing dynamic state of growth .
His centre did not claim to treat or diagnose patients, but to help them understand why they are sick.
Since then, wellness has transformed from an ideology of self-examination used to describe relaxation, meditation and managed nutrition, to its current medicalisation alleged to treat health issues. Today, wellness is an unregulated word. With the popularisation of social media platforms and the commodification of bodies and health, wellness can be bought and sold online.
In Wellmania, we see Liv enter multiple wellness spaces.
ALSO READ: Stuck in a mental health rut? 5 Ways wellness' travel can fix that
Some of these spaces endeavour to help Liv understand her mind and body, like her very concerned and unbelievably patient GP. Others indirectly assist Liv to explore her past and relationship with her body: she hitchhikes to Canberra with a death doula; she sees a tarot card reader while microdosing on LSD.
It's not all health and wellness. The show includes a significant amount of drug use and shows the dangers and dark side of the wellness industry, and of Liv. Liv's self-destructive behaviour is mixed in a dangerous cocktail with fasting, bloodletting cupping and an inability to confront the past.
A HOLISTIC JOURNEY Health is not linear. A consistent theme running through wellness discourse for the past 60 years is that to be completely well requires a holistic approach - not holistic as in the bastardisation of the word by the multibillion-dollar industry of juice cleanses and essential oils, but holistic as in the sense of the whole body.
Wellness is about the whole body - not just your physical self. Netflix Wellness is the physical body, yes, but also emotional, mental, sexual and spiritual health. Each episode of Wellmania shows us this, woven throughout a story of family, home, flourishing careers and the downfalls of them all.
ALSO READ: These wellness design trends make for a stylish AND healthy home
Alongside its wonderful, crude humour (necessary in a show featuring colonics), Wellmania unexpectedly tells the story of grief and how uniquely it penetrates and devastates our bodies.
This series shows us one woman's world of wellness. But, more than that, it reminds us how closely wellness is tied to our lives,
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
01/06/2026
In its sixth year, the broadcaster's coverage has become a global brand and ...
01/06/2026
Designed to solve a common problem in broadcasting, the automated workflow detects, identifies, removes, and documents copyrighted music
AudioShake has introdu...
01/06/2026
The sports-analytics company combines its data with proprietary AI to help leagu...
01/06/2026
Category line-up & sponsors announced
Photo: Paul Clarke
The Production Music Awards (PMA) have announced that submissions are now officially open ahead of...
01/06/2026
New hybrid sample/synthesis instrument revealed
Excite Audio have just released the latest instalment in their Evolve series, which has been developed in co...
01/06/2026
Latest TONEX expansion captures three rare vintage amps
The newest addition to IK Multimedia's ever-growing TONEX line-up introduces a set of three incr...
01/06/2026
Musically intelligent soft synth gets upgraded
Scaler Music will be probably be best known to many for their music theory tools, but their product range al...
01/06/2026
SBS confirms its broadcast sponsors for FIFA World Cup 2026
1 June, 2026
Media releases
SBS has secured Hyundai, Hisense, Macca's, Rexona, bet365, Com...
01/06/2026
Rohde & Schwarz Satellite Industry Days 2026 guided by the motto From Earth to ...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Marshall Electronics is showcasing a comprehensive lineup of next-generation POV cameras, purpose-built to power today's connected AV environments, at InfoC...
01/06/2026
Adobe Announces Concept to Vector
Deepa Subramaniam June 1, 2026
0 Comments
One of the biggest frustrations we hear from designers is how difficult it...
01/06/2026
Vampire Feature Night Patrol Graded with DaVinci Resolve Studio
Brie Clayton June 1, 2026
0 Comments
Colorist shapes dark, gritty tone for horror thri...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Mardi 2 juin 14h00
FilmLight (ARRI), 10 rue Ren Boulanger, 75010 Paris
Rejoignez-nous pour d couvrir comment FLAPI (l'API FilmLight) peut transformer e...
01/06/2026
January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026
Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...
31/05/2026
Olivia P rez-Collellmir to Premiere Original Work at Gaud Centennial in Barcelona The Berklee graduate and faculty member will debut her choral symphony with...
31/05/2026
Back to All News
Netflix Wins 15 Awards at the Canadian Screen Awards - See Pho...
31/05/2026
Taiwan is home to more than 500 NVIDIA ecosystem partners. More than 1 million N...
31/05/2026
As factories move from isolated automation to plant-wide intelligence, manufacturers need AI systems that can connect live machine signals, quality systems, wor...
31/05/2026
The NVIDIA AI Cloud ecosystem is accelerating the global buildout of AI factory infrastructure. Partners are expanding capacity to meet growing demand from ente...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Zero in on one that says yes (and no)
Andy Marken May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Hero image courtesy of Deposit Photos
For content creators the most difficu...
29/05/2026
With InfoComm 2026 just weeks away, NDI is giving attendees plenty of reasons to...
29/05/2026
Reaffirming a partnership that has defined Canadian sports broadcasting since 19...
29/05/2026
Mobile/tablet is No. 2 device for watching TV, suggesting that the sports-production industry needs to take another look at the format
Ring Digital's Sprin...
29/05/2026
Berliner Ensemble, one of Berlin's five major theater companies, has expande...
29/05/2026
Solid State Logic will showcase its new compact, fly-away TCA Tour audio product...
29/05/2026
Gerald (Jerry) Pierce, a pioneering technologist who helped shape the digital transformation of the motion picture industry, passed away last month on April 12 ...
29/05/2026
Paramount+ will be the English-language U.S. home for Barclays Women's Super...
29/05/2026
Further strengthening its virtualisation strategy to fully support broadcasters ...
29/05/2026
Swiss broadcaster Canal Alpha has deployed Harmonic's award-winning, software-based XOS Advanced Media Processor to modernize playout operations across cant...
29/05/2026
PTZOptics will showcase a new generation of intelligent video workflows at InfoComm 2026, June 17-19, Las Vegas. Visitors to booth N8227 will see how PTZOptics ...
29/05/2026
Arizona's Family has launched the Arizona's Family Sports (AZFS) streaming app, a new direct-to-consumer destination for live, local sports. The app is ...
29/05/2026
Starting in 2027, DAZN will be the exclusive home of The Canadian Football Leagu...
29/05/2026
Comcast Business has detailed the advanced network infrastructure it has deploye...
29/05/2026
In two-day event, leaders from academia and industry explored solutions to chall...
29/05/2026
The Basketball Tournament (TBT), now entering their 13th year of competition, ha...
29/05/2026
Roku has launched FOX One as a Premium Subscription on The Roku Channel in the U.S. Roku customers can now subscribe to FOX One using their Roku account for liv...
Netflix's Wellmania: A humorous dive into the world of wellnessGreen juice, microdosing, cupping and cocaine? Netflix's new show wellmania encounters all manner of wellness tropes.
