A little gem of a show blipped quietly onto our viewing radar last week – not that you probably noticed.

Apart from plugging it fairly heavily on the night of its premiere, Channel Seven did a big load of nothing in terms of pre-publicity for this fascinating program.

Fight for Life (8.30pm, Thursdays) is almost as brilliant as the outstanding Human Body series, hosted by the bespectacled Robert Winston and featuring some of the most breath-taking visuals ever seen on the small screen.

Like a souped-up, techno-whizzed RPA, UK series Fight for Life basically plants a camera atop fate’s shoulder and observes patients who are teetering on the precipice between life and death.

You could almost see the Grim Reaper hovering in the hospital corridors, sipping dodgy cafeteria coffee from a styrofoam cup – waiting, just waiting.

In the first episode, those patients were babies, just hours old. It was touch and go for Gabriel, who had somehow ingested his own waste while in the womb and was slowly being suffocated upon birth.

And there was Elijah, who needed an operation just moments after being born to remove a tumour that took up 25% of his body weight and had its own blood supply.

Another baby came into the world via Caesar and had the umbilical cord twisted around his neck, but the doctors didn’t realise until precious seconds had passed.

So what, you might think. Medicine and hospitals serve up these amazing stories as often as McDonald’s serves up fries. But rarely do we get a chance to actually see what’s going on inside the body.

It’s like slipping on X-ray goggles. Yes, it’s obviously computer-generated so it looks a little fake, but it’s incredible. X-ray vision is apparently not just for comic books any more.

It’s all so old-hat now, but do you remember the wonder with which you watched the first CSI episodes? I will never forget the first time I witnessed the slo-mo glory of a bullet piercing skin and then cracking into a rib before bursting into one of the heart’s chambers, all in gory and excruciating detail.

I honestly think I remember my jaw dropping open involuntarily and a “Wow” escaping my mouth as I watched in awe.

If you ever needed confirmation of how remarkable, resilient and just plain smart the human body is, tune in to Channel Seven tonight.

Fight for Life is slickly edited and full of drama, complete with worried voiceover man and musical stings. But would you expect anything less from a series crafted by the BBC?

And if that’s all a bit too Hollywood for you, hone in on the human story, get caught up in the emotion.

Yep, there is something here for everyone. Gorgeous graphics for the tech-heads, drama to tug on the heart-strings, medico-speak for the science nerds and real-life crises to satisfy the social voyeur in all of us.

Clever, very clever.

— REBECCA MARSHALL