Nearly seven years after skin-peeling scarecrow Gunther Von Hagens shocked audiences with a live human autopsy, Channel 4 are carving up more flesh in the hunt for ratings. But this time it's animals going under the knife in an eye-popping new documentary series Inside Nature's Giants, featuring a gruesome look at the innards of an elephant, a giraffe, a whale and a crocodile.
So is it shocking? You bet, but it shouldn't be dismissed as another of those headline-grabbing, The Boy Whose Bum Fell Off-type shock docs you'd normally find on Five. It's fascinating, eerily compelling and innovative television shot through with a streak of evolutionary curiosity, which is rubber-stamped by the involvement of author Richard Dawkins. It's also wince-inducingly gruesome.
Made alongside the Royal Veterinary College and hosted by scientist Mark Evans, the first episode features the autopsy of an Asian elephant that died of an unknown illness at a zoo. The aptly named "gross anatomy" specialists don Guantánamo Bay-style orange jumpsuits and casually hack away at 55 million years of evolution.
We see them vent some of the 2,000 litres of methane gas the average trunker produces in a day, examine the constantly renewed conveyor belt of teeth and the dexterous, complex trunk muscles that mean elephants can even throw darts. And there's not an iced bun in sight.
Whether it's a bold new spin on the samey nature documentary format or rubbernecking gore porn hoping to nab a few headlines, is a moot point. Either way, you probably shouldn't eat your dinner in front of it.
