Heart Transplant: A Chance to Live (BBC Two) was one of the best pieces of television I have seen in years. This astonishing film followed seven patients, as they waited for, and in some cases underwent, a heart transplant at the Freeman Hospital in Newcastle.

The access was remarkable. This was the first time that a full heart transplant had been shown on TV with unprecedented new technology. We were there in the meditative atmosphere of the theatre, as a patient was anaesthetised and surgeons got to work. The footage was graphic but it wasn’t presented in a sensationalist way. At each stage we were shown diagrams to explain what was going on, though there was nothing neat about this: scar tissue had to be cut, bones cracked, and bleeds stemmed.

Transplant surgery, Freeman Hospital, Newcastle

Not every patient survived and the camera never shrank away from this. “I’ve planned my own funeral,” said 34-year-old Claire, who was born with half a heart. “You’ve just got to be practical.” Claire died a week later.

One of the key problems faced by surgeons is a shortage of donated hearts. On average, we were told, patients have to wait 1,200 days before a match can be found. The bald truth is that in order for someone to have a heart transplant, someone else needs to die.

It was devastating to see people such as 56-year-old Joe waiting for the one thing needed to prolong his life. “I’ve got two kids who hopefully will have children of their own,” he said.

We tend to think of the heart as somehow integral to our personality. But what this showed is that it’s nothing more than an organ. To see nine-year-old Max careering round in the rain weeks after a successful heart transplant served as a call to arms for more of us to opt in for donation – it is a chance, in death, to give life.