Gunther's ER (2006)

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General		Extras
Category	Documentary	Featurette-The Gunther von Hagens Body Appeal (36:08) Menu Audio
Rating
Year Of Production	2006
Running Time	144:00 (Case: 190)
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	David Coleman
Studio Distributor	Madman Entertainment	Starring	Gunther von Hagens Emma Rand
Case	Amaray-Transparent
RPI	?	Music	None Given

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.78:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	None	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Dr. Gunther von Hagens is to autopsies what Jamie Oliver is to cooking. "Celebrity Anatomist" might be the phrase I'm looking for, but there's no doubting Gunther is splendid at what he does. The reality of witnessing human dissections live in a studio is most certainly not for everyone, but his shows are always factual and informative. His series' are produced in a studio with a live audience made up of future body donors and their guests, which makes for some interesting facial expressions in the crowd.

    Gunther's first series, produced several years ago, focused on the anatomy and general mechanics of the human body. His second series, Autopsy: Life & Death, was dedicated to potentially fatal diseases, and in some cases, the lifestyle choices we make that decide how we die. In his third and latest series, Gunther's ER, Gunther uses his knowledge and expertise to illustrate common injuries that are presented in emergency rooms.

    Despite our body's resilience having built up over thousands of years of evolution, we're still surprisingly susceptible to injury. Over these three episodes, Gunther recreates human injuries and trauma to illustrate exactly how injuries affect the body and how they should be treated. On hand and offering their expertise throughout are Dr John Heyworth, an accident and emergency consultant, and Emma Rand of Red Cross First Aid.

• Lesson 1: Minutes From Death (48:16) - Looks at how massive blood loss affects the body by recreating a severed femoral artery on the dissection table. To lose three litres of blood would mean certain death for anyone, and it's surprising how quickly such a large volume of blood can escape. Some time is also spent looking at obstructions of the airway, particularly in children.
• Lesson 2: Massive Blood Loss (47:24)- Haemorrhaging, both internal and external, is recreated and explained. There's a fantastic illustration of knife injuries, three in total, and the audience are polled on which they believe will be fatal.
• Lesson 3: Violent Impact (47:06)- We witness the detailed dissection of a woman who fell from a sixth floor balcony, the injuries she received that led to her death, and exactly how she landed.

    At the conclusion of each episode there's a great Q&A session with the audience. These episodes are presented exactly as they were screened on television, including interruptions for ad breaks. A bonus documentary is included on this disc, outlined in the extras below.

    If you were fascinated by any of Gunther's past series, this DVD is a must.

Video

    This video transfer is precisely what you would expect from a recent studio production. The series was produced for broadcast on digital television, in an aspect of 1.78:1. The video stream is 16x9 enhanced.

    The level of sharpness is great, with plenty of fine detail visible in skin textures and the like. There was no low level noise evident in the transfer.

    Colours are vivid and lifelike, with no signs of bleeding or oversaturation at all..

    Being a digital production, there are no film artefacts to be concerned about. A little compression grain creeps in on occasion, but the MPEG bitrate is generally well controlled.

    No English subtitles are provided, which is a shame.

    This disc is DVD9 formatted. I didn't note any pause on my equipment, nor could I find one manually, so I would guess the layer transition is between episodes somewhere.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
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Film Artefacts
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Audio

    The show's original English stereo soundtrack is included, presented in Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s).

    Like the video transfer, the audio was captured in a studio environment via the usual array of lapel and boom microphones. The dialogue is always clear and easy to discern in the mix. I didn't note any audio sync issues.

    Obviously there is no surround or subwoofer activity to speak of, nor is it called for in a series such as this.

    The score is generic and not particularly memorable. It does its job, I suppose.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

Featurette- The Gunther von Hagens Body Appeal (36:06)

    UK body donations are at an all-time low, leaving some medical students with no chance for first hand experience. Along with psychologist Dr John Marsden, Gunther heads out on the street to sell the idea of body donation to the public. What makes this piece interesting is the differences between British and German concepts of death, and it would have certainly benefited from a bit more depth in this area. Gunther attracted some negative reactions from the British establishment in 2002 when he performed the first public autopsy in many years, which points to some of the issues facing the body donation program. This is an interesting featurette, made for television, that manages to dispel some of the urban myths surrounding body donation for the benefit of medical science.

    The transfer is on a par with the free-to-air digital broadcast.

    The extras amount to a documentary about body donation in the UK.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall