Bonekickers introduces us to the maverick, wildly over-acting Gillian Magwilde (Julie Graham) and her crack team of archaeologists. With a gurgling cry of ‘We start digging’, they proceed to excavate a park in Somerset, and within minutes they’ve uncovered a piece of the True Cross and incurred the wrath of some fundamentalist christians. Elsewhere, there’s a lurid and gratuitous beheading that’s obviously been thrown in to cause some controversy, a fight in an underground chamber full of burning crosses, and one character manages to save herself from death with a bit of impromptu singing (a moment that is sure to go down in history as the most jaw-droppingly awful sequences in television ever). I was introduced to the term ‘jumping the shark’ earlier this year, and Bonekickers should be commended for managing to leap straight over it in its maiden episode; in fact, mere words can’t express what a dreadful, monumental failure this show was – it makes Torchwood look like 2001: A Space Odyssey. I loved every inept, ludicrous minute of it, and it seems I wasn’t alone – reports are in that the first episode garnered 6.8 million viewers.
