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Why not let TV help you fake it in the job of your dreams?

A bogus US attorney has been exposed as having learned his law from watching Boston Legal. So what other professions could TV prepare you for?
Boston Legal TV series
James Spader and William Shatner in Boston Legal – one of the TV programmes that taught Tahir Malik the rudiments of the law. Photograph: ABC/Everett Collection/Rex Features

When Marcus Moore needed a lawyer to defend him on more than 20 traffic offences, he had no hesitation in picking local Chicago attorney Tahir Malik, a man who had represented more than 60 defendants over a perod of four and a half years and clearly knew his way round a courtroom. Only now Malik needs a lawyer rather more than his client, for it turns out he has never been near law school and doesn't have a single professional qualification: everything he had learned had been picked up through his own numerous brushes with the law and via a lifelong passion for TV dramas such as LA Law and Boston Legal.

Which makes you wonder just how many other professions you might be able to bluff your way through if you are prepared to put in the requisite hours in front of the TV. It's a good guess that no matter how many episodes of Airline or the flight simulator sequences of the Krypton Factor you watched, if you managed to blag your way into the cockpit of a 747, your one and only flight would still terminate in a fireball. But there must be a few other jobs where you might get a little more leeway, so here's the experts view on which are the best programmes to watch for your chosen profession.

The doctor

"Holby City is a good starting point. You can learn a lot about bedside manner and, if you watch carefully, you might even pick up enough tips to perform a few minor operations. Just try not to be disappointed when you find everyone isn't trying to get you into bed. Alternatively, House would give you an insight into acquiring a credible drug and alcohol habit, but a continued insistence that your patients have some obscure, exotic disease rather than a bog-standard pneumonia will see you up in front of the General Medical Council's ethics committee in next to no time."

Dr Ann Robinson, London

The teacher

"Waterloo Road would be useful, as long as you don't think you can just end a lesson out of the blue, which they seem to do a lot. I would probably watch Teachers too, although it would give you the misleading impression that no lessons have to be planned for."

Claire Rodin, English teacher, New Malden

The publican

"All the soaps give the publicans a bad name; they try to make it look easy. Only Fools and Horses would be helpful, I suppose, because of the atmosphere that is created, but then they also say things that I have never said in 10 years of being a landlord."

Bob Bridges, landlord of Crossways pub, Midsomer Norton, Somerset

The chef

"Hell's Kitchen can show you how the kitchen works and how a service runs; when you go out for dinner in a restaurant, you don't actually see what's going on behind the scenes. It also shows that there are lots of different roles in the kitchen, whereas something like MasterChef would be more useful in terms of actually how to cook."

Hell's Kitchen and MasterChef chef Sam Player, of the Poacher's Pocket, Shepton Mallet, Somerset

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