The premise of Bonekickers – that archaeologists discover evidence that seriously unsettles the accepted version of the past – is one I was perfectly happy to accept. And that fact that it was brought to us by the people who devised Life on Mars was potentially promising. I was never as ardent a fan of the latter as many: I thoroughly enjoyed the Gene Hunt bits, but frankly they could have come out of Viz.

Anyway, what really annoyed me about the Bonekickers pilot episode was being told what to think about the characters. One expert introduced another as ‘Google with a beerbelly’ and that was supposed to pass for characterisation. Only, in my book at least, characterisation is based on behaviour that leaves a conclusion in the viewer’s head, not a summation of that person delivered by another character. So that annoyed me. Then it happened again, and I realised this was no accident, but an intentional attempt to give ersatz characterisation that was unearned by what I was actually seeing. And that bugged me.

Which isn’t to say there wasn’t any characterisation going on. There were a few stereotypes in evidence, mostly in the form of a media academic who wrote books about sex in history that were adapted for Channel 5, and that clearly made the author an enemy. The heroes were our boys and girls in the trenches, with trowels and, err, spectrographic analysis machines. And if they weren’t larger than life enough, there are also some descendants of the Knights Templar running around, and I have a horrible idea that the whole thing is going to develop into some kind of Da Vinci Code scenario. Which is fine: once I sussed that, and had tired of wincing at the sub-CSIisms and clunky dialogue, I stopped watching and instead put on a DVD of some sublime live music and had a fantastic evening.

So, what to make of all that? Well, I’m pleased that the BBC is spending money on something that isn’t an emergency service drama. That’s definitely a good thing. I’m less pleased that they went to the purveyors of one left field hit to find another, when there are any number of writers and production companies out there who could have come up with something else. Or maybe they did go that route, and weren’t happy with what they came up with. I’d be fascinated to read the brief for what became Bonekickers anyway, and see if anyone else came up with anything for it.

Overall then, 10/10 for trying, 3/10 for execution. I seriously doubt that I will be watching future episodes of Bonekickers. And I do hope that someone, somewhere, hits the bullseye in terms of delivering a post-watershed hit for a large audience: I appreciate it’s not an easy task.