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Thursday 4 December 2008

My big worries

Bonekickers (BBC1); Burn Up (BBC2)

Unfortunately, one or two viewers have been saying unkind things about Bonekickers. Most viewers, in fact: ‘All the Playschool enthusiasm of Time Team and none of the intellectual rigour’; ‘Is this The Da Vinci Code for the under-eights?’; ‘I have never watched such utter drivel. Who the hell is that woman? She cannot act. If it lasts all six episodes I will be amazed’; and ‘Oh my God! This is the worst programme I have ever seen on BBC1.’

Those quotes all came from the official BBC Bonekickers fan site so I can scarcely wait for the I Hate Bonekickers counterpart. But I’m sure the people who made it — the same team responsible for Life on Mars — know what they’re doing. By cunningly splicing Time Team, The Da Vinci Code and Torchwood, then filming the whole thing as if it were an Armstrong and Miller comedy pastiche in the manner of Nude Practice, they have ingeniously created what may well indeed be the most risibly inept programme in the history of TV. And therefore a dead cert for cult, so-bad-it’s-good viewing by stoner students and the unemployed.

I particularly like watching that fine actor Hugh Bonneville’s inner torment as he slums it as the boffin in the cut-price Indiana Jones outfit, whose job is to impress the viewer with historical factoids, but then undercut the high seriousness at the end by saying things like: ‘That’s enough burning True Crosses. Where’s the nearest pub?’

But I also like: the feisty Glaswegian woman with the thatched hair and the Mysterious Backstory; the fact that anyone white, middle class and male is either a drunk, a prat or a psycho; the fact that anyone black is bright, perky and committed; the hilarious action scenes at the end so gloriously bathetic they make Scooby Doo look like North by North West; the spurious air of diligently researched authenticity: ‘We want a strontium 87 to 86 ratio of about 7.08. No. Hell’s tits, it’s 7.05, which suggests volcanic activity’; the fact that, despite being crack archeologists, they seem accidentally to destroy almost every object they find.

More articles from: James Delingpole | this section

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