TV: Monsters Inside Me

"Monsters Inside Me" is a documentary show on Animal Planet that focuses on human parasites. Each episode, a hapless victim becomes the subject of a biological invasion, gleefully recreated in flashy CGI. If you aren't antsy about eating undercooked shellfish, trekking through a God-forsaken wilderness, or coming into contact with a strange animal, you will be after watching "Monsters Inside Me."

The evocative moniker of the TV series should be also be a hint: the parasitic infections get pretty gross. The show has featured pork tapeworms, botfly maggots, and brain-eating amoebae. What gets me is how often people experience symptoms and are then misdiagnosed by physicians - a rash, an ache, or a sudden stiffness is explained away until things get much, much worse.

On every episode I've seen, things eventually turn out okay. The show doesn't hide the fact that the victim survived; they often appear on-camera to narrate. Still, even without the suspense, it's interesting to hear what it was like to have some exotic worm lodged in your cerebellum.