Bonekickers

The current warm weather working up a sweat when strenuously not moving or doing anything I gave in and suffered through my backlog of three Bonekickers episodes from BBC1.

The premise is simple - rip-off Primeval; just remove the dinosaurs and time-holes and replace them with archaeological artefacts and historical conspiracies. Sadly they kept the shoot at odd angles and the whizzy speed-up slow-downs as well as the dire dialogue "Just use your archaeological imagination." - what? Likewise does anyone believe that a second-year student doesn't know how to pronounce the name of the warrior queen of the Iceni (Boudica not Boadicea) while amusingly her older colleagues keep getting the name of the tribe wrong (E-ken-e not I-see-ni)?

Also just like Primeval where every episode alluded to the lead character' s missing wife, Bonekickers constantly mentions the lead character's mother who had some sort of breakdown, oh and some special sword which may have caused it. Watching the third episode I kept thinking "So when are they going to mention the sword?" and as I approached the end "Oh wow they've cleverly left out mentioning the sword this time" that was until it was shoe-horned in at the last moment.

They've even kept a similar roster of characters - older guy, young guy; older women, younger women; conservative, reckless; eager-too-please, world-weary - just mixed and matched the traits to the actors. At least they've kept the young lady in her clothes, but Julie Graham as the lead does seem to like her tight jeans (no objections at least she's not a stick like Spearitt) and scoop tops.

So overall implausible, badly written, badly directed, well-acted (for what they're having to work with). Trouble is it's like popcorn - it may taste just like cardboard drizzled with butter, but that doesn't stop you cramming it in and as such I'm still going to be watching the rest of the series; if only to discover whether this bloody sword is really supposed to be Excalibur or not.