FATAL EXPERIMENTS: THE DOWNFALL OF A SUPERSURGEON, BBC4, 10pm
THIS Storyville film is spread across three episodes and tells the story of Paolo Macchiarini, a world-famous surgeon whose controversial work is subject to attacks, allegations and police investigations. The world’s media begged for interviews with him but he dismissed them all, except this Storyville programme, and during the making of the show, Macchiarini’s “spectacular downfall” occurred.
The surgeon was troubled by “the lack of spare parts when something goes wrong inside our bodies” and tried to create synthetic organs, such as making a windpipe out of plastic. Can organs really be assembled in a lab? And what happened to the patients who received them? “For most of them everything ended the same way – in death.”
Macchiarini was accused of falsifying his research and experimenting on terminally ill humans, and during filming police began investigating him on charges of “bodily harm”.
So is he a genius or a cruel fraud?
ORDINARY LIES, BBC1, 9pm
TONIGHT’S story might have been really good but it shares themes with the first episode of Charlie Brooker’s new series of Black Mirror and you don’t need me to tell you which drama is superior.
Holly is a young PA in the Cardiff warehouse. She looks glamorous and she ensures her Instagram feed reinforces this image. But reality is different: she lives in a dismal flat and drives a battered old purple Micra and her boyfriend is a rather dull forklift driver. There’s no glamour in real life – only online. When she finds a suspicious note in her boyfriend’s jacket it shatters her fragile confidence and sends her off on a crusade to change her life. She does this by creating a new persona online and using it to lure back her old boyfriend who broke her heart so many years ago.
Why are you making commenting on The National only available to subscribers?
We know there are thousands of National readers who want to debate, argue and go back and forth in the comments section of our stories. We’ve got the most informed readers in Scotland, asking each other the big questions about the future of our country.
Unfortunately, though, these important debates are being spoiled by a vocal minority of trolls who aren’t really interested in the issues, try to derail the conversations, register under fake names, and post vile abuse.
So that’s why we’ve decided to make the ability to comment only available to our paying subscribers. That way, all the trolls who post abuse on our website will have to pay if they want to join the debate – and risk a permanent ban from the account that they subscribe with.
The conversation will go back to what it should be about – people who care passionately about the issues, but disagree constructively on what we should do about them. Let’s get that debate started!
Callum Baird, Editor of The National
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here