Bodyshock: When Anaesthesia Fails (C4) Faith (BBC1): DIANE Parr went into hospital to have two teeth removed and an abscess drained.

She was given a standard general anaesthetic to make her unconscious, immobile and insensitive to pain. At least, that was the plan. She found herself lying in surgery, awake but completely paralysed. The medical team proceeded without realising she could feel everything. The narrator noted that "for 40 minutes Diane was to endure a slow torture". Fortunately, her natural defences kicked in eventually. "He asked for a scalpel and I passed out," she recalls.

The Bodyshock documentary wasn't the sort of thing you wanted to watch before going into hospital for an operation, especially after learning that anaesthetics is one of medicine's biggest mysteries. Current methods are safer than the old ones of rendering patients unconscious with ether and chloroform, both potentially lethal.

Nowadays, it depends on the anaesthetist mixing the right combination of drugs to knock out patients. As no two people react in the same way, this isn't as easy as it might sound. "It's a little bit like cooking," explained one anaesthetist, "you give a cook exactly the same ingredients as another cook and you get a completely different dish at the end."

Jeanette Liska went into surgery to have a hernia removed. What no-one knew was that the gas canisters used to sedate her were empty. She was paralysed but awake, although unable to open her eyes.

Her description of what it felt like to undergo an operation while conscious wasn't pleasant. She couldn't see but could hear and feel everything, from "my tissue tearing like a piece of paper slowly in half" to smelling her flesh burning as wounds were cauterised.

"I thought my brain was going to explode," she said. At this point, the symptoms of stress in her body were spotted. Unfortunately, she was given something to reduce her heart rate and the operation continued.

She's started a support group for people who experience "awareness" during surgery. Her conclusion, and that of the experts, is that the condition is more prevalent than previously believed. A figure of one in 1,000 affected was mentioned.

There's good news from a doctor in Hull. He's testing a safeguard system that paralyses everything apart from the patient's right arm. If he becomes aware during the operation, he can signal to the medical team.

The drama Faith attempted to put a human face on the 1984-85 miners' strike by interweaving the story of two sisters into the real-life events. One was married to a miner and became active in the women's support group; the other was married to a policeman and having an affair with her sister's miner husband.

These soapy storylines didn't really add anything. Footage reminding us of the real-life personalities involved, along with reconstructions of picket line confrontations, were a much more gripping reminder of the industrial dispute that split not just families but the nation.

Published: 01/03/2005