I’ve always been fascinated by the scientific side of archaeology, and if I hadn’t been lured away by the joys of Operational Research it’s what I intended to go into after my first degree. So I was delighted that the BBC decided to give us a drama series based on archaeology: Bonekickers

Now you might say that, wonderful though archaeology is, watching an archaeological dig is a bit like watching paint dry (unless you’ve got Tony Robinson to liven it up) – but you could say the same about police dramas. Real police work is mostly deadly dull and repetitive, but it doesn’t stop good police dramas being excellent entertainment.

To begin with it looked as if this parallel was explicit. We even saw many of the stock police drama characters (grumpy female lead with a chip on her shoulder, enthusiastic and slightly techie but streetwise sidekick, cynical old keeper of the files, raw recruit and superintendent equivalent who is a political animal). But whoa, what’s this?

All of a sudden we’ve got religious nutters waving swords about and it has become a sub-Da Vinci Code (yes it’s possible to get sub Da Vinci Code) thriller complete with what appeared to be a copy of the Pantheon underground, under a dovecote in rural England, filled with Roman crucifixes. Oh and said female lead looking very uncomfortable swinging around on a rope in mid air while someone tried to skewer her.

I thought I would be moaning about the inevitable rather iffy science in the archaeology bit (and let’s face it, the tracking down of the essential clue wasn’t exactly mind stretching. ’I’ll go and look it up in a book in the library,’ which appeared to have an original 13th century manuscript on a shelf in a Victorian leather binding, the way you do). But no, it was really uncomfortable watching.

Strangely, though, I’m not going to drop it like a ton of bricks. Surely it can only get better? I’ll give it another week. After all, this is from the person who brought us Life on Mars (though admittedly he was also responsible for the sickly Sunday evening feelgood series Where the Heart is)

One things for sure. Despite the cheesy rip-off picture on its website…

…Bonekickers ain’t no Indiana Jones.