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Periphery of an up and coming sociopath
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| Uncanny X-Men First Class #1 |
[14 Jul 2009|05:48pm] |
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http://www.alternatecover.com/2009/07/14/uncanny-x-men-first-class-1/ http://www.alternatecover.com/?p=1390  It’s easy to feel sorry for Scott Gray. After doing a superb job of editing Marvel’s UK monthly collected editions, and a memorable tenure as writer of the Doctor Who Magazine’s comic strip, his work for Marvel US has become increasingly high profile, culminating in his present gig as the writer of the second generation of the ‘First Class’ sub-franchise. Despite rumours that the next X-Men film would use the name, the writer has stayed true to his brief, eschewing a more expansive take on the franchise.
It’s just rather unfortunate that he finds himself in competition with Chris Claremont’s equally retro but joyously insane approach to the X-Men over in the pages of Forever.
There’s clearly a considerable amount of thought gone into the venture, with Gray managing to pull off a tricky balancing act between the X-Men as they are now conceived and the knockabout adventurer approach of the early years of Claremont’s run. The writer had an abundance of concepts to throw at the fledging team in the early years, with each new two or three issue arc bringing a fresh menace of ally for the mutants, some of which were remarkably avant garde. Gray tackles this problem intelligently, turning to one of the better-known corners of Marvels’ secondary franchises to supply the pop-art surrealism that he seeks. The resulting issue might be better titled ‘Nightcrawler and the Inhumans’, but manages a commendable facsimile of the approach of the years it seeks to mimic, without breaking the rules of the series as it stands today.
It’s just a pity that the result feels a bit insipid. Gray obviously has a great deal of affection for Kurt Wagner, and his youthful naivety about the way the world works is well-used, but it’s a little disappointing that the first issue of a book famed for its teamwork and interplay of characters should focus almost exclusively on some figure. Much of the remainder of the cast are reduced to single lines of dialogue, while the opening scene in which Nightcrawler is persecuted for his rescuing of two girls feels more like the sort of misunderstanding for which Spider-man is famed than the opening to this particular property. Matters aren’t helped by Roger Cruz’s rather static art. While the bile that is often heaped into this particular creator is undeserved, the scratchy linework on show here is far from the best material he’s produced.
With a title so dependant on injecting verve into an existing setting, there’s sadly little room for such lifeless work.
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| Wednesday Comics #1 |
[13 Jul 2009|10:01pm] |
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http://www.alternatecover.com/2009/07/13/wednesday-comics-1/ http://www.alternatecover.com/?p=1387  Well, as an exercise in form, you absolutely cannot fault it. Wednesday Comics is a beautiful, beautiful object – inventive in its design, charming in its aesthetic, and even if the paper used makes it irritatingly disposable for something that cost $3.99, it can’t be denied that there’s something inherently fun about reading comics in this format (unless you’re trying to do so on a crowded tube carriage).
Sadly, where the whole thing makes a shaky rather than spectacular start is in its failure to fully exploit the form with which it’s experimenting. Too many of the strips contained within feel simply like blown-up versions of regular-sized comics pages – and, worse, too many of the writers involved seem to think that being asked to do a one-page strip means you simply throw out the first page of a regular-length comic. If the “done-in-one-issue” format is becoming a harder-to-achieve beast in modern comics, then Wednesday Comics shows a “done-in-one-page” job to be even further beyond most writers’ imaginations. It’s particularly annoying when you consider that each page is, essentially, equivalent to four pages of your average monthly issue. Only Ben Caldwell’s Wonder Woman – and, to a lesser extent, the twin strips of Kerschl and Fletcher’s Flash page – really seeks to exploit this, while at the opposite end of the scale, Kyle Baker only grants us five panels for his Hawkman (and if you divide the cost of the issue evenly by page, it means you’re paying about five cents per panel).
Still, Neil Gaiman shows a more assured grasp of the one-page format with a very Casanova-esque Metamorpho, while Paul Pope admirably eschews any sort of introduction by throwing the reader straight into the middle of Adam Strange’s setup; a stark contrast to the entire half-page given over to rattling through various past Teen Titans lineups. The more frustrating strips, such as the flagship Batman and Superman pages, are the ones that make you feel you should be turning the page – rather than waiting a week – for the next instalment.
Really, though, aside from some fun moments in the retro likes of Supergirl and Flash (indeed, it’s the strips that share a fun, nostalgic, continuity-free Silver Age-esque feel that appeal the most), the stories in general do little to jump off the page. What’s clear is that Wednesday Comics is, first and foremost, a showcase for its artists – and they’re almost universally superb. Lee Bermejo’s expansive imagery almost makes the briskness and low panel count of the Superman story feel worthwhile, while Joe Quinones conjures up a lovely, ’50s-esque feel for Green Lantern, and Pope is just terrific. Sterling work in the main from the colourists, too – particularly whoever took the decision to give the Iris West section of the Flash page Benday dots, enhancing the “romance comic” feel. Not everything works, mind – the sort-of-Manga style of the Titans page is a little too abstract, while Joe Kubert’s page would have looked fine “ordinary” sized, but feels like it’s been blown up to a size it can’t really sustain.
On the whole, though, despite a disappointing start to most of the stories themselves – and little in the way of “hook” factor – I find myself thinking strangely favourably of this. Perhaps I’m just a sucker for a gimmick – but I want to own these things, and I especially want to support anything that involves the main publishers being experimental, taking risks, and – perhaps most notably – putting out anthology books. At the moment it’s a curious experiment rather than an immediate success, but there’s potential here for it to become something special.
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| Picture framing |
[13 Jul 2009|11:34am] |
Can anyone tell me about places in Oxford to get picture frames?
It's not for a picture, it's for a jigsaw - so I can't exactly take it to the shop and ask them to frame it for me ("oh by the way would you mind putting it together first?"). :-)
What I'm looking for is somewhere that can make me a custom frame using the measurements I give them. Any suggestions?
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| Michael Jackson's death hit Glastonbury hard – and the news channels harder | Charlie Brooker |
[29 Jun 2009|09:37am] |
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/29/michael-jackson-glastonbury-charlie-brooker Festival-goers did the moonwalk in tribute to Jacko. But for the BBC, ITV and Sky, the news demanded much, much more … I was at Glastonbury when Jacko died. That's not a factual statement, but a T-shirt slogan. The day after his death, souvenir tops with "I was at Glasto 09 when Jacko died" printed on them were already on sale around the site. In fact, when Jacko died, I was at home playing Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars on a Nintendo DSi. I am 38 years old. Many festival-goers apparently discovered the news when DJs around the site began playing Michael Jackson records simultaneously. Music combined with word of mouth. That's a nice way to find out. I learned it via a harsh electric beep, bringing my attention to a text message that simply proclaimed "Jackson's dead" in stark pixelated lettering. Clearly it's the sort of information you have to mindlessly share with the rest of the herd the moment you hear about it. But first I needed confirmation. I occasionally text people to say there's been a massive nuclear explosion in Canada, or David Cameron's gone mad and launched his own breakfast cereal shaped like little swastikas or whatever, in the hope they'll pass it on without checking. I didn't want to fall for my own jape. I switched on the TV. Jackson was still alive on BBC News 24, where they seemed to be reporting he was in hospital following a heart attack. That wasn't good enough, so I flicked over to Sky News, which tends to blab stuff out while the Beeb drags its feet tediously checking the facts. He was bound to be dead on Sky. But he wasn't; he was possibly in a coma. In desperation, I turned to Fox. They would already be attempting to communicate with him via the spirit realm, surely. But they weren't. If anything, they were being more cautious than the Beeb. Boo. Back to Sky, which was now reporting that a website was announcing his death. That'd do for now. I beamed a few texts out: "Michael Jackson apparently dead". "Piss off" came the reply. It was my own fault. I'd texted a few weeks earlier to say Huw Edwards had just vomited live on the news. Confirmation of his death gradually spread across the news networks, but the main terrestrial channels were still obliviously broadcasting their scheduled programmes. ITV won the newsflash race, diving straight in after Trial and Retribution. Alastair Stewart abruptly shouted "MICHAEL JACKSON HAS DIED" down the lens like a man standing on the shoreline trying to get the attention of someone on the deck of a passing ferry during gale-force winds. Fair enough. Whenever I hear the phrase, "And now a special news report", I automatically start scanning the room for blunt objects to club myself to death with in case they're about to announce nuclear war. Since this wasn't the apocalypse, but an unexpected celebrity death – sad, but not worth killing yourself with a paperweight over – Stewart was right to blurt it out as fast as he could. After watching the news long enough to assess that, yes, he was dead, and the circumstances all seemed rather tragic, long enough for them to play a bit of Billie Jean and Beat It and Smooth Criminal and Blame it on the Boogie and so on, reminding me that he was a bona fide musical genius, I went to bed. The next day he was still dead, but somehow deader than the day before. He was all over the radio and papers. The TV had clips of Thriller on heavy rotation, which seemed a tad inappropriate, what with him playing a decomposing corpse in it. If Bruce Willis died falling from a skyscraper, I doubt they'd illustrate his life story by repeatedly showing that bit from Die Hard where he ties a firehose round his waist and jumps off the building. Across all the networks, a million talking heads shared their thoughts and feelings on his death. They had rung everyone in the universe and invited them on the show. On This Morning, a Coronation Street actor revealed he had once had tickets for a Michael Jackson concert but couldn't go because of the traffic. It was a sad day indeed. At 3pm, his death was still "BREAKING NEWS" according to Sky, which has to be some kind of record. Even 9/11 didn't "break" that long. Next day, the news was apparently still sinking in around the globe. The BBC went live to Emily Maitlis as she stood on Hollywood Boulevard (at 1am local time) waiting for two young Latinos to perform a breakdance tribute to the King of Pop. Something went wrong with the iPod hooked up to their speakers so she had to stand there for a full two minutes, awkwardly filling in while they fiddled with the settings. Sky had flown Kay Burley out to LA too, to hear the fans' pain and pull concerned faces. This continued into the following day. It's probably still going on now. But the news is not the place to "celebrate" Jackson's music. The Glastonbury stage, the pub, the club, the office stereo, the arts documentary: that's the place. The news should report his death, then piss off out of the way, leaving people to moonwalk and raise a toast in peace. If I was God, here's what I'd do now. I'd force all the rolling networks to cover nothing but the death of Michael Jackson, 24 hours a day, for the next seven years. Glue up the studio doors and keep everyone inside, endlessly "reporting" it, until they start going mad and developing their own language – not just verbal, but visual. And I'd encourage viewers to place bets on which anchor would be the first to physically end it all live on air. And while that was happening, I'd create some other stations that covered other stuff. Current affairs type stuff. I think I'd call them "news channels". They might catch on. This week Charlie was saddened to read of the death of former NME writer Steven "Swells" Wells: "I disagreed with 85% of what he wrote, but I always wished I could hurl sentences together like him – he tossed words around like a demented cartoon chef. He seemed hilarious and furious, music journalism's very own Sadowitz. Never met or spoke to him; now I wish I had. RIP."
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| Charlie Brooker on our rotten institutions and lack of faith |
[13 Jul 2009|01:07pm] |
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jul/13/charlie-brooker-corrupt-institutions-faith It's all gone wrong. Our belief in everything has been shattered by a series of shock revelations that have shaken our core to its core. You can't move for toppling institutions. Television, the economy, the police, the House of Commons, and, most recently, the press ... all revealed to be jam-packed with liars and bastards and graspers and bullies and turds. And we knew. We knew. But we were deep in denial, like a cuckolded partner who knows the sorry truth but tries their best to ignore it. Over the last 18 months the spotlight of truth has swung this way and that, and one institution after another was suddenly exposed as being precisely as rotten as we always thought it was. What's that? Phone-in TV quizzes might a bit of con? The economic boom is an unsustainable fantasy? Riot police can be a little "handy"? MPs are greedy? The News of the World might have used underhand tactics to get a story? What next? Oxygen is flavourless? Cows stink at water polo? Children are overrated? We knew all this stuff. We just didn't have the details. After all their histrionic shrieking about standards in television, it was only a matter of time before the tabloids got it in the neck. Last Monday even the Press Complaints Commission, which is generally about as much use as a Disprin canoe, finally puffed up its chest and criticised the Scottish Sunday Express for its part in the Dunblane survivors' story scandal. You remember that, don't you? Back in March? When the Scottish Sunday Express ran a story about survivors of the Dunblane massacre who'd just turned 18? It fearlessly investigated their Facebook profiles and discovered that some of them enjoyed going to pubs and getting off with other teenagers, then ran these startling revelations on its front page, with the headline ANNIVERSARY SHAME OF DUNBLANE SURVIVORS. "The Sunday Express can reveal how, on their social networking sites, some of them have boasted about alcoholic binges and fights," crowed the paper. "For instance, [one of them] - who was hit by a single bullet and watched in horror as his classmates died - makes rude gestures in pictures he posted on his Bebo site, and boasts of drunken nights out." Nice, yeah? As I'm sure you recall, there was an immediate outcry, which was covered at length in all the papers. You remember their outraged front pages, right? All their cries of SICK and FOUL and VILE in huge black text? Remember that? No? Of course you don't. Because the papers largely kept mum about the whole thing. Instead, the outrage blew up online. Bloggers kicked up a stink; 11,000 people signed a petition and delivered it to the PCC. The paper printed a mealy-mouthed apology that apologised for the general tenor of the article, while whining that they hadn't printed anything that wasn't publicly accessible online. All it had done was gather it up and disseminate it in the most humiliating and revolting way possible. Last Monday's PCC ruling got next to zero coverage. Maybe if it had happened after the News of the World phone-hacking story broke it would have gathered more. Or maybe not. Either way, the spotlight of truth is, for now, pointing at the press. But this is just one small part of the ongoing, almighty detox of everything. There's been such an immense purge, such an exhaustive ethical audit, no one's come out clean. There's muck round every arse. But if the media's rotten and the government's rotten and the police are rotten and the city's rotten and the church is rotten - if life as we know it really is fundamentally rotten - what the hell is there left to believe in? Alton Towers? Greggs the bakers? The WI? The internet. Can we trust in that? Of course not. Give it six months and we'll probably discover Google's sewn together by orphans in sweatshops. Or that Wi-Fi does something horrible to your brain, like eating your fondest memories and replacing them with drawings of cross-eyed bats and a strong smell of puke. There's surely a great dystopian sci-fi novel yet to be written about a world in which it's suddenly discovered that wireless broadband signals deaden the human brain, slowly robbing us of all emotion, until after 10 years of exposure we're all either rutting in stairwells or listlessly reversing our cars over our own offspring with nary the merest glimmer of sympathy or pain on our faces. It'll be set in Basingstoke and called, "Cuh, Typical." What about each other? Society? Can we trust us? Doubt it. We're probably not even real, as was revealed in the popular documentary The Matrix. That bloke next door? Made of pixels. Your co-workers? Pixels. You? One pixel. One measly pixel. You haven't even got shoes, for Christ's sake. As the very fabric of life breaks down around us, even language itself seems unreliable. These words don't make sense. The vowels and consonants you're hearing in your mind's ear right now are being generated by mere squiggles on a page or screen. Pointless hieroglyphics. Shapes. You're staring at shapes and hearing them in your head. When you see the word "trust", can you even trust that? Why? It's just shapes! Right now all our faith has poured out of the old institutions, and there's nowhere left to put it. We need new institutions to believe in, and fast. Doesn't matter what they're made of. Knit them out of string, wool, anything. Quickly, quickly. Before we start worshipping insects.
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| The Sunday Pages #65 |
[12 Jul 2009|10:16pm] |
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http://www.alternatecover.com/2009/07/12/the-sunday-pages-65-2/ http://www.alternatecover.com/?p=1384 
This week’s capsule reviews cover Dark X-Men: The Beginning #1, Green Lantern #43 and Ms. Marvel #41.
Review: Dark X-Men – The Beginning #1
If you’ve been reading “Utopia” and want to know how Osborn rounded up the so-called “Dark X-Men”, well, good news – this anthology book does that job perfectly well. If you’re looking for a good story, though, you can forget it. This is vignettes all the way. The trio of stories in this particular issue shows us how Namor, Mimic and Dark Beast came to be recruited. Both the former and latter shorts rely on their dialogue to carry the story, and seeing the Dark Beast as a foil for Osborn is an unlikely but enjoyable pairing. The short between the two, however, fails to hit any believable mark as we take a pointless and shallow tour through the continuity minutia of The Mimic. I can appreciate the comprehensive knowledge on display, but it all feels like too much. Not a terrible start to a mini, but only on the understanding that it’s for X-Men completists only. [JHu]
Review: Green Lantern #43
Not really a Hal Jordan Green Lantern story at all, but at least it’s a “Prelude to Blackest Night” worthy of the name, as this nasty little tale sets up the new form of Black Hand, the figure at the centre of the soon-to-be-pivotal Black Lantern Corps. As a standalone story it’s not half bad, with Doug Mahnke’s artwork well-suited to the grim tone – although I’m still a little uncomfortable with taking a largely naff and useless GL villain (once used to great and hilarious effect in the classic Justice League #28) and turning him into such a dark figure with such an altered backstory. Furthermore, one scene in particular provides evidence of how unnecessarily violent Geoff Johns can be for a supposedly “all ages” book – and an otherwise excellent montage of “death in the DCU” only emphasises this when you realise just how many of the moments in question featured Johns’ creative involvement in some way… [SP]
Review: Ms. Marvel #41
As someone who started buying Ms. Marvel again purely for the Moonstone stories, I’m a little disappointed that the conceit of her being the lead character was rather quickly truncated, but the stories have been decent enough, despite an artist’s roster that can’t sit still. In this issue, Reed starts to bring the idea of the “storytellers” to its conclusion, as well as put Ms. Marvel back in the spotlight. The judicious use of the Avengers cast might initially seem appropriate for the title, but it’s a pity Reed waited until now to use them, after resolutely ignoring Danvers’ role in any teams except her own SHIELD squadron in the past. It’s not great, but to give the brief run its due, at least it hasn’t made me want to drop the series a second time. [JHu]
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| Amazing Spider-Man Annual #36 |
[10 Jul 2009|10:17pm] |
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http://www.alternatecover.com/2009/07/10/amazing-spider-man-annual-36/ http://www.alternatecover.com/?p=1382  Last year’s Spider-Man annual was a fairly major story that ended the life and career of Jackpot, one of the more promising members of the new Spider-Man cast. It’s always a pity when story opportunities get taken away by a character’s death, so it’s fitting, then, that this year’s annual should make a fair stab at turning a dead character into a story opportunity.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Technically, the annual is a lead-in to the wedding of J. Jonah Jameson Snr. and Aunt May. It sees the Parker and Jameson families hitting Boston for an engagement party, and in addition to meeting Aunt May’s extended family, Peter also manages to come into conflict with Raptor, a not-really-a-supervillain character who’s out to bring a member of the Reilly family to justice. With some decent art from Spider-Girl’s Patrick Olliffe, and some rather unconvincing attempts at transcribing a Boston accept from Marc Guggenheim, it’s all fairly standard stuff in the Spider-Man formula.
Except, of course, the moment two-thirds of the way through, when we discover exactly why Raptor mistook Peter for the criminal he was looking for. It’s because he’s actually looking for Ben Reilly, Peter’s clone.
Now here’s something I never expected to see referenced ever again – material from just about the most maligned Spider-Man story in ever. Just last week, we pointed out how not good the Clone Saga was. However, it’s easy to forget, but for virtually a generation of Spider-Man readers, this wasn’t just a Spider-Man story. It WAS Spider-Man. Month in, month out, it was all about Peter Parker quitting, losing his powers, having a baby and – yep – Ben Reilly taking over the mantle. Except, of course, when it was about the opposite of all that. So to see it come back – well, it’s not all that surprising.
And, call me a ridiculous optimist, but I’m glad. Ben Reilly himself was never the problem with the clone saga – in fact, truth be told, we’re actually quite fond of him here at Comics Daily Towers – so seeing that the Spider-titles are willing to reference those stories, even going so far as to reprint artwork from them wholesale, is enough to give me a warm, nostalgic feeling.
Now, I’m not for a second saying that Ben Reilly should definitely be brought back – but as I said at the start of this review, it’s good to see a character’s death being turned into a story opportunity. In all honesty, I can’t wait to see where it’s going.
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| Charlie Brooker's screen burn: 11 July 2009 |
[10 Jul 2009|11:06pm] |
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2009/jul/11/screenburn-antony-gormley 'Gormley's public art project is essentially Big Brother: The Tate Modern Edition' As I type these words I'm periodically switching to another window, in which a chubby woman sits on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square, applying make-up. She's occasionally shouting "morning!" at people. Apart from that, nothing's happening. Yet it's so compelling, I can't stop flipping over to look at it, even though I'm on deadline. Now she's texting. Now she's on the phone to someone. Now she's stood up. This column's never going to get written. I'm talking, of course, about Antony Gormley's One & Other (oneandother.co.uk) the "public art" project in which people take turns standing on the fourth plinth for an hour. It lasts 100 days, so that's 2,400 people, each of whom has their 60 minutes of glory streamed live on the internet. There's also a weekly catch-up "highlights" show on the Sky Arts channel. It's Big Brother: Tate Modern Edition, essentially. I say Big Brother: it's actually more like the good old days of Big Brother; the early ones when we were astounded to watch live footage of people simply pottering around in a kitchen. When the housemates were left to "get on with it" rather than dress as pirates and play party games every four minutes. The days when nothing happened and we didn't mind. That's what this is like, minus a Geordie voiceover. Mind you, even though the "plinthers" have zero opportunity to form holiday romances or start racist arguments (what with being alone up there) they're equally - if not more - attention-seeking than your average BB housemates. Half of them have come in fancy dress. We've already had a man dressed as a town crier bellowing about his pub, a man dressed as a cat fielding texts from the public, and a woman who did the midnight-1am shift disguised as a giant pigeon, occasionally emitting a rather half-hearted "cooo" noise. (Her costume was particularly rubbish: she looked like the lead in an illegal Turkish version of Batman shot on a budget of 25p.) In other words, it's "Britain's Got People". Except no one's judged or voted off. They get their full slot regardless. The comedy writer Dan Maier (a regular TV Burp contributor, fact fans) quickly defined a condition called "Twenty-Minute Sink-In - the point at which plinthers realise their idea will sustain nowhere near an hour". Andy Warhol was spot on: 15 minutes is just right. After that they start to visibly deflate. A mini-breakdown ensues. The town crier quickly seemed to turn on the passers-by, berating them for not asking any questions. No one's done a shit or started jerking off yet, but that's bound to happen before the 100 days are up. It's like a David Blaine stunt taking place for no discernible point. So just like a David Blaine stunt, then. There's also no technological "public interaction" system in place, although you can go down there in person and shout at them. That happened a fair bit last night. Trafalgar Square's pretty rowdy at 1am. No one's thrown a bottle high enough to catch one yet - and hopefully they won't - but that's bound to happen before the 100 days are up too. Every hour, on the hour, a cherry picker comes in to swap one plinther for another. Right now the chubby woman's now being replaced by - uh oh - a man dressed as a turd carrying a loudhailer. He's protesting that 2.5 billion people don't have a proper toilet. Or clean water. Ah, he's doing it for Water Aid. It's like the London Marathon for people who can't be arsed running. Fifteen minutes have expired for turd man, so now he's gone a bit quiet. But he does, at least, have some props: a giant fish head, which he'll presumably get to in a few minutes. If you're applying to go on the plinth (which you can do, via their website), I'd recommend taking a good book, or at the very least a Nintendo DS. Or maybe a small video recording of the previous plinther to stare at. Because it's a proper time sponge, this. Dangerously hypnotic. Sod the Angel Of The North. This is brilliantly futile.
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| Charlie Brooker's screen burn: 27 June 2009 |
[27 Jun 2009|09:00am] |
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2009/jun/27/charlie-brooker-screen-burn-natures-giants This is not a freak show but one of the most remarkable natural history shows I've seen If you were to compile a list of 100 things you wouldn't really want to see on TV, "watching someone methodically dissect the corpse of an elephant" would probably feature somewhere around the mid-30s point, sandwiched between "Simon Bates investigates naturism" and "toddler being sick against a butcher's shop window". Certainly my initial reaction on hearing about Inside Nature's Giants (Mon, 9pm, C4) was one of incredulity balls-deep in glee. Once I'd got over the title, I thought: they're ACTUALLY chopping up an elephant? For an HOUR? Bless their sensationalist socks. That'll be fun to write about. Maybe they'll use a chainsaw on the trunk. Maybe there'll be a bit where they get 28 dwarves to climb inside the skin and form a human pachyderm, walking around like a giant pantomime horse while the producers play Baby Elephant Walk on the soundtrack. Maybe they'll pull one of its eyes out and demonstrate how tough it is by asking Vernon Kay to jump up and down on it 'til it bursts, except it won't burst - it'll be like jumping on a giant squash ball, so he'll slip over and land face-first in its guts. None of that happens. Make no mistake, they take the poor creature apart. There's not a bit of that elephant you don't get to see. They pull the skin off, drag the intestines out, saw the legs into segments ... and yet, and yet ... And yet the overwhelming sense you're left with is one of towering respect for the wonder of nature, for the excitement of science and its role in explaining the world. This is categorically not an empty freak show, but one of the most remarkable natural history programmes I've ever seen. The gore may sound off-putting but it isn't really. It's fine once you're over the initial shock - like jumping in an unheated swimming pool that feels cold for 10 seconds until your body gets used to it. The first thing to understand is that the elephant wasn't killed for the sake of the programme. It was dead anyway. Secondly, these dissections take place regularly, for the benefit of trainee veterinary surgeons (there's a large number of them watching proceedings throughout). Thirdly, and perhaps most significantly, the programme takes each segment of the elephant - literally - and uses it as a springboard for a fairly in-depth VT sequence detailing how said part works and why it evolved that way. So we get an entire section on the digestive system, one on the trunk, another on the feet, and so on, all illustrated with bespoke reports from Africa, archive footage, explanatory CGI animations and even Richard Dawkins, who pops up a couple of times to share his awe of nature (and appears so delighted and enthused by the process of evolution, he manages to talk for several minutes without once calling all organised religion a bastard). At every turn, you learn new things about elephants - and not just things you didn't know, but things you hadn't even thought of questioning. Take the feet. I always thought of elephants' feet as simply being stumps with toenails. In fact I scarcely thought of them as "feet" at all, but legs that ended arbitrarily at the point they met the ground. I now know that, inside, the skeletal structure of an elephant's foot is surprisingly human. They're effectively walking around on tip-toes: the rear of each foot is a kind of fatty pad, a shock absorber, like a spongy wedge heel. It evolved to help them cope with their massive weight. That's a small example, but one that's genuinely changed the way I'll look at elephants forever. And it's precisely the sort of detail that might simply wash over you in a more traditional nature documentary. This is a rare thing - a hardcore biological science documentary that will both entertain and enlighten almost anyone who watches. It's also strangely moving. Because they chop that elephant to pieces all right - but they do so with palpable love. Watch it. It's amazing.
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