The opening scene starts with sperm racing to an egg

Scientists have struggled for centuries to pinpoint the qualities that distinguish humans from the millions of other animal species with which we share the vast majority of our DNA. Now we explore those traits once thought to be uniquely human to discover their evolutionary roots.

David Malone asks if we are right to see the heart as merely a brilliant pump or whether it should be allowed to reclaim something of its old place at the centre of our humanity. The heart is the most symbolic organ of the human body.

Two narrative threads - one is an emerging love story between two awkward teens, Jens and Lisa, who are having sex for the first time and the other is an eventful quest of Simon the Semen and his friends to reach the golden goal, the Egg.

An ejaculate of sperm swim through a uterus. At the branches of the Fallopian tubes, half go one way and half the other. Down one tube toward the sperm bounces a female head, singing, happily on her way. Four sperm zero in; she panics but can't avoid them. Pow! they hit her full force and disappear into her. The decision she makes and what she does next change the course of her life in a major way.

'The Great Sperm Race' tells the story of human conception as it's never been told before. With 250 million competitors, it is the most extreme race on earth and there can only be one winner.