Prepare to be disgusted
High-impact TV is coming your way with ABC's three-part series "Body Snatchers", which gets up-close and personal with the parasites that invade our bodies.
The footage of the parasites is so graphic that the BBC crew filming the series was reeling during shooting. When you take a look at the subject matter, it is not difficult to understand why.
The series reveals quite graphic depictions of crab lice nesting in pubic hair, a botfly maggot being extracted from a woman's head, a man excreting a tapeworm into a toilet and much more.
Series producer, Anne Laking spoke about some of the stomach-churning scenes the crew had to shoot. In one incident, a teenage girl visits her doctor because of what she believes to be a boil on her neck.
"You're watching the doctor and then you see this thing poke its head out of this girl's neck," Laking says. "It was just awful. Nobody had told me what was going to happen and the edited version that you see is a pale imitation to what the full-scale raw rushes were."
Then there was the biologist who became so interested in parasites that he volunteered to swallow tapeworm larvae and have the worm grow inside him.
As the worm grew inside him, little bits would break off and crawl out of his bottom, enabling him to collect them.
Laking, who describes the man as a "terrific sport", said he would then ring the production office so a crew could be sent to film the episode.
"I remember looking at the rushes, which show this little segment sitting on his arm and nothing much happened for a while - and then it moved," Laking says. "That was my second-most gross moment after the maggot."
High-impact TV is coming your way with ABC's three-part series "Body Snatchers", which gets up-close and personal with the parasites that invade our bodies.
The footage of the parasites is so graphic that the BBC crew filming the series was reeling during shooting. When you take a look at the subject matter, it is not difficult to understand why.
The series reveals quite graphic depictions of crab lice nesting in pubic hair, a botfly maggot being extracted from a woman's head, a man excreting a tapeworm into a toilet and much more.
Series producer, Anne Laking spoke about some of the stomach-churning scenes the crew had to shoot. In one incident, a teenage girl visits her doctor because of what she believes to be a boil on her neck.
"You're watching the doctor and then you see this thing poke its head out of this girl's neck," Laking says. "It was just awful. Nobody had told me what was going to happen and the edited version that you see is a pale imitation to what the full-scale raw rushes were."
Then there was the biologist who became so interested in parasites that he volunteered to swallow tapeworm larvae and have the worm grow inside him.
As the worm grew inside him, little bits would break off and crawl out of his bottom, enabling him to collect them.
Laking, who describes the man as a "terrific sport", said he would then ring the production office so a crew could be sent to film the episode.
"I remember looking at the rushes, which show this little segment sitting on his arm and nothing much happened for a while - and then it moved," Laking says. "That was my second-most gross moment after the maggot."
