Supercow and pigs that glow at night - an average day on the GM farm

The Daily Mail
Nov. 03, 2006

Appliance of science: the Belgian Blue is bred to produce gallons of milk

Channel 4 is to unveil a shocking menagerie of genetically modified animals in a new show revealing the frightening leaps technology has taken.

Among the bizarre engineered creatures from around the world is a giant cow, three times the size of ordinary cattle, reared without fat to produce gallons of milk.

But the so-called Belgian Blue - pictured here - is perhaps the least disturbing of the creatures to be shown in the three-part series Channel 4 Farm this winter. There are also glow-inthedark pigs and goats which produce spider's silk.

TV scientist Olivia Judson and journalist Giles Coren travel the world to visit the places where these animals are now being reared. There is even a genuine "allotment" of growing human noses.

Channel 4 director of television Kevin Lygo said: "This is an exciting science series about genetic modification. Everything on the Channel 4 Farm is real. You may think these creatures are the future but they are the reality, living right now.

"We've discussed how to do science endlessly and how to make it accessible and I think this does just that. It's looking at what is going on, what it means and asking what the implications are for our world. It's high time someone did this on telly."

The channel also unveiled a new TV reality series starring showbusiness mogul Harvey Goldsmith, to be screened in February, in which he takes six failing entertainment businesses and aims to place them back on the road to success.

Channel 4 is keeping the identities of the six under wraps, but said they include a well known British pop star who disappeared to Hollywood and has not been seen since, a British heavy metal band with a European following but ignored in the UK and a local radio station with big-name DJs but small audiences.

Goldsmith is renowned for his blunt talking attitude and colourful language. A sneak preview of the pilot of Harvey Goldsmith Presents shows him branding a struggling circus a "complete shit heap" and DJ Mike Reid as having "lost the plot".

Also unveiled today as part of Channel 4's winter season is a new Apprentice-style TV show in which Jamie Oliver offers one disadvantaged youth the chance to run a restaurant.

The documentary series, Cutting The Apron Strings, will pick up where Jamie's Kitchen left off four years ago, gathering the unemployed trainees he recruited to man Fifteen and offering one the chance to manage his or her own venture. Oliver's charitable Fifteen Foundation-has bought a pub in Essex from which to run the project.

Oliver said today: "Never underestimate what young people can do once they've got their heart in the right place."

Other highlights include Mark Of Cain, an incendiary new drama about young British soldiers in Iraq by acclaimed writer Tony Marchant.

An eight-part drama starring David Morrissey, Kate Wrath, tells of a family moved to a utopian town under a witnessprotection scheme - but enters spooky David Lynch territory as they discover everyone else there is also under witness protection.