Turning 40 - It’s All About the Journey

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Are You Turning 40 and Looking for a Profound Life Change?

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Forty might be the new 30. But while social attitudes about chalking up 480 months and 350,400 hours have changed, it is still a big deal, big enough for its own television show. “The Big 4-0,” a new reality series that begins on Wednesday night on TV Land, documents people turning 40 in the age of Botox, Viagra, fat-sucking surgery and life coaches.

Photographs from TV Land

Brian Scheele and his wife, Cindi, preparing for his 40th.

Not that there’s anything wrong with those little tweaks along the way. You just won’t find them front and center in these “Big 4-0” profiles, which include a former football player, a father of quadruplets who uses a wheelchair, a woman facing divorce. The six people in the six-part series all showcase moments of challenge, crisis or transformation. And fun too.

“It was just this moment in life, which is so important,” said J D Roth, a producer of “The Big 4-0” with Todd A. Nelson of 3 Ball Productions. Their credits include the reality shows “Beauty and the Geek,” the CW competition series that pairs dumb beauties and smart geeks, and “The Biggest Loser,” the NBC weight-loss contest.

Mr. Roth promises the musings and the festivities of his crop of celebrants are in marked contrast to MTV’s “My Super Sweet 16,” the hit reality show about the elaborate birthday bashes of often spoiled teenagers.

“It’s not like turning 16, where you’re showing off,” said Mr. Roth, who turns 40 this month. “Forty is about family and friends,” he said, and it is often a time with more questions than answers. “We picked people searching for something.”

Anyone born in 1968 or thereabouts who wants to share “The Big 4-0” experience can do so via the Internet. TVLand.com has photographs of the show’s participants and message boards to discuss birthday plans. Mr. Roth said he figured there was enough angst and wisdom out there for 100 episodes.

The show’s first episode follows Derrick Moore, a former running back for the Atlanta Falcons and Detroit Lions. Mr. Moore, a family man in suburban Atlanta, is now the chaplain and developmental coach for the athletes at Georgia Tech. But facing 40, he wants to prove that he still has the stuff, physically speaking. He sets up a football game with some of his former N.F.L. friends facing off against Georgia Tech players.

“It’s an incredible achievement,” he said in an interview, meaning his experience, on screen and off. “Our culture and society has changed greatly over the years, so the potential of so many things that can happen” has changed greatly. He added, “Now at 40, you can meet that person you dream about, you can start a family, you can go back to college.”

“I’ve done all those things,” Mr. Moore said, “so I can only imagine the potential I have for the next 40 years.”

Immediately following his profile on Wednesday (a night of back-to-back episodes) is the story of Lisa Custard, a former model who is now a wife and mother in Los Angeles. Her 11-year-old son, Dylan, wakes her up the morning of her birthday, singing, “Yo, yo, yo,” while her husband, Kevin, records it all on a video camera. Ms. Custard, the usual reality TV extrovert, plans a party at a Beverly Hills club that will culminate with her popping out of a cake.

Her issue: she so worries about being hot and sexy at 40 that none of her friends know her age. Her other bit of baggage is a two-year estrangement from her mother. And her husband and son have cooked up their own surprise for the big party.

“I was really scared about turning 40,” Ms. Custard said in an interview. “There’s this double standard. When men get that shiny gray hair, they’re sophisticated. Us, it’s uh-oh, you’re getting old.”

But times change, and she has changed too, Ms. Custard said. Filming her birthday adventure was cathartic, she explained, adding that she hoped that that upbeat message would come across to viewers. “Are you going to be 40 and fierce?” is how Ms. Custard put it. “Or are you, ‘I’m 40 and my life is almost over?’ ”

Hint: Ms. Custard now tells her age.

Brian Scheele, whose story is to be broadcast next Wednesday, has had the kind of challenges that help many people moaning about turning 40 put things in perspective.

He was a newlywed when he broke his back in a horseback-riding accident. It paralyzed his legs, put him in a coma and landed him in a wheelchair. He and his wife, Cindi, remain happily married, though, and the couple have quadruplets, who are now 6.

“The Big 4-0” shows Mr. Scheele playing homemaker on the family’s ranch north of San Antonio. He scurries around the kitchen preparing pancakes for the children and doing laundry. Still, he wistfully watches the children ride away on their bicycles. His two big plans for turning 40 are to go sky diving and horseback riding.

“It’s risky,” Mrs. Scheele says on camera of her husband’s wish to tumble out of an airplane. She and the children whisper about their own more earthbound plans for him. Will her fears stop her husband?

That question, of course, is answered in the episode.

Mr. Scheele said in an interview that he hoped his experience could be inspirational. “I’m lucky, and I learned so much I want to share,” he said. “Nowadays you can figure out a way to do anything.”