I don’t watch a lot of television. Nevertheless, the Observer’s TV guide heartily recommended the new BBC1 show ‘Bonekickers‘, featuring a ficticious archaeological team that through sheer luck and scientifical reasoning unearths a new mystery every week. Think Indiana Jones meets ‘Carry on Camping’ and the ‘X – Files’.

So today I was treated to sixty minutes of worried looking faces, jokes about bosoms and pubs, a terribly bad man that was killed by losing his footing and tumbling into a small fire and all sorts of terrible cliches.

Rarely does the BBC get it so terribly wrong.

I really wanted this show to work, as it promised everything that one loves about archaeology on TV: weird men wearing hats, women with degrees and sex-appeal, terribly evil people, traps, conspiracy theories and, in ths case, real ale.

What did we get? A story David Duchovny wouldn’t get out of bed for and a bunch of characters so cliche ridden that it was painful to watch. There was some completely unnecessary gore in form of a ludicrous beheading. There were monks. The final showdown between good (feisty archaeologist with cleavage) and bad (creepy christian who wasn’t able to stand up and dust of a couple of flames from his evil trenchcoat) was so embarassingly painful that I started to watch Sky One on the other screen instead. A terrible disaster.

It can only get better from here.