Bonekickers

[poliphilo]

It had archaeology, a feisty female lead, Hugh Bonneville, knights templars, medieval artefacts, swords, mad Christians, virgin saints, Blake's Jerusalem, miracles and a cellar full of burning crosses. These are a few of my favourite things- so it's just possible I may have forgotten to pack my critical faculties before embarking on the journey. I gather the word on the street is "rubbish"- but I loved it. Of course it was totally barking, but why not? It was silly, not stupid.

The problem with this first episode was they tried to do too much. There was a large cast to introduce, a lot of medieval history and archaeological information to throw at us, a back story to hint at, a complete, twisty story to tell- and all in an hour. It felt hurried. No sooner had the creepy bad guy been introduced than he'd gotten his just deserts and our heroes were brushing his ashes off their sleeves and going down the pub. If I'd been in charge I'd have fought to make it a two-parter.

A lot of current TV suffers from this compulsion to rush, rush, rush.  Maybe it's because I'm old and my brain hasn't been trained up on multiplex movies and computer games, but I do like a little suspense.

Comments

[dakegra.livejournal.com]

ah, I completely missed *that* too!

thank goodness for iPlayer. :-)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

At the very least, it's a whole lot of fun.

And someone gets his head cut off- in one fell swoop- with a medieval broadsword!

[rosamicula.livejournal.com]

I look up to you as an example. I expect to be come more tolerant and regain my sense of fun as I age.

I shall be most affronted if I don't.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Gosh, but you're kind.

May I say in reply that your courage leaves me positively awestruck.

A sense of fun has to be worked at. I was a pretty gloomy, humourless bugger in my thirties.

[jfs.livejournal.com]

You're the second person I know who has used the phrase 'silly, not stupid' in the last couple of days.

I need to remember to use it more.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

There's a big difference, I think.

The Elizabethans used silly/seely as a term of affection.

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

I watched it too. I probably won't bother again, but I agree that despite all the silliness, it was basically OK. At least they had some decently-drawn main characters, and were at least attempting to tackle controversial issues (in a very BBC manner).

I agree about the rushing, too. I was actually really surprised in the last five minutes of the episode to discover that it wasn't a two-parter. I'd expected the episode to end with all the archaeologists trapped down in the cellar under the dove-cote, with the villain cackling and slamming a cover down over the well-head. I'd also expected much more to come out of the interactions between Viv and Helena (the nurse), with a fuller relationship between them developing in the next episode. So I was really quite flabbergasted when it all wrapped up with a *bish - bash - bosh* after all.

I probably won't bother watching it again, but I might if I'm channel-hopping around that time and looking for something mildly entertaining. And on the whole I think I'm pleased that archaeology is being presented on TV as exciting and sexy.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It looks like we get a different story every week, with an overarching narrative about Professor Magwilde's mother. The
thematic use of that line from Tennyson-"follow the gleam"- suggests that the ultimate prize will be something Arthurian- poosibly (or is this just too hackneyed?) the Grail.