Watch True Horror 2009 online: Episode 2 BBC True Horror Frankenstein

In 19th-century London, two decades before Mary Shelley wrote her acclaimed novel, pioneering scientific showman Professor Giovanni Aldini successfully used electricity to reanimate animals, severed human limbs and the corpses of recently beheaded criminals. But Aldini needed a whole body – a strong, male specimen, very recently killed by asphyxiation – to attempt his most ambitious experiment: a complete human reanimation. Because he wanted to play God. Aided by Mr Pass, the man whose job it was to procure bodies for the surgeons to anatomise, an ideal specimen was identified. A strong young man accused of murdering his wife and child. The evidence against George Foster was flimsy, but Aldini and his assistant were determined to have their good clean hanging. Within the hour, an electrified rectal probe would be applied to try to bring this unfortunate man back to life. The experiment, like no other, would have an extraordinary, lethal climax. It was this true, chilling event that inspired Mary Shelley’s Gothic horror story Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus.

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