Bonekickers

Posted by Remote Control on July 7, 2008 10:14 PM | Permalink

You can always tell when the BBC is getting excited about a programme: Its stars start turning up all over the place.

Whenever there's a sniff of a new series of Spooks, the whole cast is wheeled out to do interviews all over the place: From Friday Night with Ross to the Chris Moyles Breakfast Show on Radio 1, there truly is no great machine geared up for self publicity than the BBC.

As so it's proved with Bonekickers, which seems a bit like a British Indiana Jones, but done by committee. Yet top marks to Simon Mayo who, on his telly preview segment on his daily Five Live show pretty much killed off any desire most of his listeners will have had about tuning in on Tuesday at 9pm.

Of the panel of three, no-one had anything good to say about it, all neatly summed up by the phrase "It's like Scooby Doo but without the detail." Oh dear. Part of the panel's problem also seemed to be the fact it was made by the creators of Life on Mars, and so they sought out, where they could, parallels in the characters. And from the writers of a sharp-tongued cop drama comes a sharp-tongued new drama. Fancy that.

And, it has to be said, the BBC's press office hasn't done a very good job promoting it:

Julie Graham (Dalziel & Pascoe, William And Mary) is Gillian, a feisty Celt who heads up a team of archaeologists working out of Bath University.

Adrian Lester (Hustle, Ballet Shoes) is Dr Ben Ergha, a forensic expert who brings an objective understanding to the team, Hugh Bonneville (Miss Austen Regrets, Tsunami) is the encyclopaedic but terminally louche, Professor Gregory Parton and Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Spooks, Tish Jones in Doctor Who) is the eager, young, post-grad intern, Viv Davis.

As a team their skills combine under a variety of imperatives to extract bodies, books, weapons and all manner of artefacts which lead them into an investigation of the past that will unlock dangers and mysteries in the present.

From the excavation of murdered 18th century slaves to the possible discovery of the True Cross, each episode is a window on a period of history but, more importantly, a reflection on how we live now.

Running through the series is a greater puzzle that Gillian keeps to herself for fear of ridicule – the hunt for the greatest treasure in the history of Man, a hunt that drove her brilliant mother insane, a hunt that pits her wits against her academic nemesis, the arrogant, urbane TV historian Daniel Mastif, and that will culminate at the end of series one in a desperate race for glory which may destroy her in the process.

The trailer can be found here. It leaves me thinking the BBC is trying to tap into the whole Dan Brown "Da Vinci Code" type market. Can it crack it? Time will tell - just as long as the hard sell which will no doubt involve a celebrity appearance on the BBC Breakfast couch in the morning doesn't turn even more people off.