4 x 60

The engine stomach. The wiring nerves. The air-pump lungs, and fuel-pump heart. All the way down to the air filter nostril-hair, and windscreen wiper eyelashes. Each strange little part of us has evolved over millennia, perfectly engineered by nature... to serve a vital, intricate, interwoven purpose in a magnificent machine.

James May stars in a new show examining the 30 trillion cells working together in the most extraordinarily complex system imaginable: the human body.

In each episode, James will be visiting cutting edge labs demonstrating how things work in the human machine by conducting experiments in his lab and the use of his own body. He will also explore how things can also go wrong and the body’s natural defences against them as well as the human-mechanics (aka doctors) have come up with to fix the problems.

With James already knowing the joys of tinkering with the inner workings of a car or bicycle, he’ll find out what the world of engineering has learned from how the body works to find out what all our bits do - in sickness and in health, till death do us in.

Join him, under the bonnet of the extraordinary machine that is the human body.

Read More | Download flyer

Starring: James May

Produced By: Plum Pictures

Director: Tom Whitter

Producer: Catrina Lear

Executive Producer: Will Daws, Gill Wilson

Broadcaster: Channel 5 | Year of Production: 2026