Babies, bears and bad poetry

Fascinating programme on Channel 4 last night, which followed three women through pregnancy and contained endoscopic images that were so awesomely good you could be forgiven for thinking they were the results of big-budget CGI.

The narration was, on the whole, informative, despite the occasional odd simile, such as: "At this stage of development, the foetus's head accounts for a third of its body length. That's like a fully grown human having a the head of a grizzly bear." I assume the intention was for this strange comparison to be illustrative of body proportions, rather than appearance, though it took a while to get the mental image out of my head.

The programme was ultimately ruined though, not by the narration but by the interspersion of Roger McGough's crap schoolboy-esque poetry which droned on about 'drifting through the amniotic universe of silent biological space... connecting to the mothership, etc.' and other such cliched toss, which just served to trivialise the whole escapade.

I like my poetry as it 'appens, but whatever awe you felt for the visuals was destroyed by lines like: "If eyes are the windows to the soul, then the eyelids must surely be the window cleaners." (I remember it only because it was so ridiculous) all intoned in a Beatley brogue.

Not really profound, more like profoundly shit.