Telegraph e-paper

MY DEAD BODY

Channel 4, 10pm

“I was fascinated with the body and science and loved all things to do with biology. Life has a strange way of working out.” Toni Crews’s own, ironic, words open Sophie Robinson’s astonishing documentary about the mother of two who died, aged 30, from a rare cancer of the lacrimal gland (which makes our tears) in 2020 and was the first person in the UK to donate her body for public dissection.

For four years, Crews documented her cancer experience on social media, posting pictures of her scars after she had surgery to remove her eye. Her diary account of her illness has been recreated by artificial intelligence and her narration gives us a visceral connection with her. So she’s never a corpse lying on the laboratory table, but a once living, breathing person as Professor Claire Smith – head of anatomy at Brighton and Sussex Medical School – and her team dissect Crews’s body. They chart in minute detail the course of the disease, from initial diagnosis to death – an inestimable aid to doctors now and in the future.

“She wasn’t going to go out quietly,” says Toni’s mother, as we see videos of a young woman who embraced life – and the reality of her death, too. It’s a tough watch at times, but a deeply affecting one. Veronica Lee

Monday 5 December Television

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2022-12-03T08:00:00.0000000Z

2022-12-03T08:00:00.0000000Z

https://dailytelegraph.pressreader.com/article/282033331221663

Daily Telegraph