CSI: NY - Season 3, Part 2

If this didn’t actually happen, you would suspect a Pythonesque spoofer had been at work. Hill Harper, who plays the precisely efficient Dr Sheldon Hawkes, takes a trip to the most bizarre establishment imaginable, calling itself The University Of Tennessee Forensic Anthropogue Centre. The Body Farm is a much better name, although they don’t grow bodies here. They scatter them in the woods and throw what look like black bin liners over them and monitor the process of decomposition. To a skeletal state, it takes a few days in the heat of summer and two months in the chill of autumn.

“The facility”, as they call it, was started in 1982 by Dr William Bass and since then has been used by students of all kinds and even the FBI who send agents to simulate crime scenes. Bodies are “donated.” Six years ago, they were given 40. This year, it was 93. They refer to this upsurge as “the CSI factor.”

Watching Hill being escorted round the place by PHD candidate Rebecca Wilson is fascinating in a ghastly kind of way and funny as well, because Hill is such a city boy. In his neat new jeans, he’s not overexcited about getting up close and personal. He puts a brave face on it, though, like the trouper he is, but still looks a bit girlie when asked to “move the branch” above a sunken corpse.

They take a walk in the woods, probing the progress of insect infestation on a series of semi-disintegrated people.

“When you see a squirrel knowing on a bone,” Rebecca says,” you know that person has been out here for a long time.”

She’s good on the maggot thing, too. When Hill observes a fat dead man, lying face down, with the little white critters chomping on greenish flesh, he wonders why they are all at the top end.

“Maggots like to go inside a body because it’s warmer. It’s a great environment for them. And there are more orifices over here than down there.”

Thank you for that, Rebecca. Let’s check out the wheelie bin.

Inside are the remains of John Doe, decomposed into a lumpish mess at the bottom, swimming in his own juices. Although Hill is black, he pales.

They move on into the woods.

“This person’s only been out here a week,” Rebecca announces, pushing deeper through the leaves.

Hill looks queasy.

“One week…?” he offers, faintly.

If you are into decomposition and the mysteries of your mortal frame, once it has passed its sell-by date, Rebecca is your guide.

When Hill says goodbye, he’s smiling broadly for the first time. It’s going to take a while getting over what he described as “mother’s soup” at the bottom of the wheelie bin, but, for now, he’s on his way back to the city.

“The brain is one of the first organs to decompose,” Rebecca had said.

He thinks about that on the flight home and reckons it’s already started.