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John Lydon's Megabugs (Green Umbrella GUDVD5479) Disc
1. Spiders / Mosquitoes / Scorpions / Bees / Leeches 117 minutes This is a great value double DVD set, superbly packaged in a slip case with a holographic cover: watch John change into a bug before your very eyes. All ten episodes of the Discovery Channel series are included, a whopping 3 hours and 54 minutes' viewing time. John tackles the various bugs he encounters in the USA with relish, and he's not afraid to subject himself to the horrors of being stung, eaten, and sucked to illustrate the nature of the nasties on show, if only to make the point that they are not all that nasty after all, just misunderstood. Like John! John also treads an unorthodox path through the subject. He tackles issues such as urbanisation which threatens the tarantula in the desert outside of Phoenix, and the subject of alternative medicine with bees being used to treat an MS sufferer, ("does your doctor know about this?" John enquires). John goes in search of scorpions under the cover of darkness ("they glow in the dark"), and visits the swamps of Louisiana to get chewed by the leeches. Mosquitoes, "the most dangerous animals on the planet" is a fascinating episode as we get to learn the full life cycle of the deadly bug, coupled with John subjecting himself to 14 minutes unprotected inside a mosquitoe tent, (previous record 3 minutes)! You can feel his pain! The Amercian deep south is home to many of the nasties, and the woods outside New Orleans provide the backdrop for John's exposure to termites, a species that not only weighs more than the human race but prove to be environmental heroes! Cockroaches,"the ultimate recyclers", love the dark, and therefore John heads down sewage pipes. As for flies, it's a story of filth and sex tourists: keep an eye out for maggots on the move. John climbs into a freshly excavated pit to see a colony of ants at work, and then goes out at night to see leaf cutter ants doing just that; cutting leaves and taking them back to their colony to produce fungus. Johnny dons a protective suit and tackles a vicious looking wasps nest in the final episode, and finds himself a queen bee. A strength of the series is the quality of the close-ups, the jellow jacket bees proving specatular. As per the theme of the series, the megabugs have a positive side, with wasps proving their worth in preserving sugar cane. John shows that even the most fearsome megabugs have a purpose and a right to exist, although extermination where appropriate is welcolmed by John, such as an horrendous cockroach infestation. The series carries a pro-environmental and pro-nature message, but crucially it's delivered in an entertaining way. It reminded me of the Horrible Histories range of books which seek to educate by entertainment. John and the Discovery Channel pull off a similar feat for a more mature audience with Megabugs, and that is quite some achievement. Review by Phil Singleton (December 2005) God
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