SUPERBUGS
Michael Mosley looks at antibiotic resistance
The rebranded BBC Earth gets into its stride this week with Michael Mosley vs the Superbugs (BBC Earth, Sky 074, Wednesday, 8.30pm), which sees the popular science communicator look into the emerging threat of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Quite properly deciding that even in the age of experiential television it would be unwise to subject the actual presenter to superbugs, the producers constructed “Microbial Michael” – a set of body doubles fashioned from agar jelly – to see how they’d get on. The answer: “not very well”.
The potential answer to the problem of antibiotic resistance might seem unnerving in itself. Phages – the viruses that bacteria get – are being co-opted by researchers to
battle the worst bugs.
Meanwhile, BBC Newsnight looks into what’s killing middle-aged white men in the US – and it’s not bugs, but the loss of hope, jobs and status. The BBC has posted What’s Killing America’s White Men? in full on YouTube and it emerges as a sensitive, nuanced look at how some men reach for political extremism and others for the guns that kill them. tinyurl.com/NZLWhiteMen.
Tutankhamun: The Truth Uncovered (Choice TV, Monday, 8.30pm) revisits a familiar legend with the assistance of modern tools, including a CT scanner and DNA analysis. Ironically, it succeeds principally in making the most famous of the pharaohs look a mess. Whether presenter Dallas Campbell’s concluding theory about what actually killed the 19-year-old god king is correct or not, it becomes clear that Tutankhamun didn’t have much of a life.