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Bonekickers |
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Starring Hugh Bonneville, Adrian Lester and Julie Graham, Bonekickers (Tuesdays, BBC1) is the new six-part archaeology mystery drama from Matthew Graham and Ashley Pharoah, award-winning creators of Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes.
"CSI meets The Da Vinci Code" is how Graham puts it. "With Time Team at the end [of a dig], when they all go down the pub," adds Pharoah.
Here they give us their guide to the episodes, which each centre on a holy relic, and their tips for watching.
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Episode 1 - Army of God
Artefact: A dark, ragged chunk of wood. Is it 2,000 years old? Does it come from the Holy Land?
Location: The climax was filmed in Garway, Herefordshire (the site of a genuine Templar church and dovecote containing 666 dove boxes).
Matthew Graham: "This is all about faith and rallying the faith around an object, so our team find a group of Knights Templar who may have been carrying a religious artefact back from the Crusades. They believe they may have found a piece of the True Cross [on which Christ was crucified]. Then it's about how that piece of a cross is exploited by a Christian fundamentalist organisation.
"Note that there's also a mystery that runs through the series, like a reward for the audience if they stick with it. Any clues? Look for motifs that run throughout, which will become increasingly apparent, and for the references to Tennyson, which start off quite obliquely but gather weight. And Gillian's mother - what made her go mad? If indeed she is mad."
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Episode 2 - Warriors
Artefact: A brass pocket watch. How can it hold the key to the foundation of the United States?
Location: Bristol Channel.
MG: "This starts off with the discovery of bones - manacled together - in the Bristol Channel. The team assume they're 18th-century slaves, which gets people in Bristol very excited, thinking there's going to be some sort of apology for the city's history. Then our guys discover a mystery about the bones that no-one is expecting. The surprising layer to the story is that the bones have a curious impact on the American presidential elections."
Ashley Pharoah: "I'm a Bristolian by childhood and was always fascinated by how that city deals with the slave trade and its past."
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Episode 3 - The Eternal Fire
Artefact: A mosaic depicting a man and woman united by Cupid. Why does the discovery of this mosaic mean almost certain death?
Location: The tunnels under the Bath's Roman baths.
MG: "An earth tremor in the middle of the city releases toxic gas that has built up underneath the Roman baths. The team investigates the catacombs and uncover a Roman love story and possible evidence of a famous Celtic warrior having been imprisoned there."
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Episode 4 - The Cradle of Civilisation
Artefact: A cylindrical stone tablet inscribed with Assyrian writings. Can it predict the future?
Location: Ancient Babylon (a stone quarry near Shepton Mallet).
MG: "It begins with night hawkers, who loot treasures from war-torn cities and sell them on the black market. An old flame of Gillian's believes that one of these artefacts is an ancient Babylonian prophecy that may afford some hope for Iraq: that the country will be great again.
"The raison d'etre of the story is to remind people, if they didn't know it already, that Iraq was once the most powerful, the richest and the most technologically advanced nation on earth. That's at the heart of that show."
Episode 5 - The Lines of War
Artefact: Part of a buried First World War tank. Could it blow Europe apart?
Location: Northern France - in fact, in a field outside Bath.
MG: "When remains are found in a tank three teams of archaeologists - French, German and British - descend and begin to argue over who has the rights over the site, mirroring old hostilities. Then Gillian's team discovers that there are even greater mysteries linking the bodies to a far older feud.
"It's a really interesting episode, because it's about excavating on the very edge of living memory."
Episode 6 - Follow the Gleam
Artefact: A slice of a stone table inscribed with Latin. Is this linked to the quest that destroyed Gillian's mother?
Location: The climax was filmed in and around Wells Cathedral.
MG: "It's the culmination of a mystery that's been running throughout the series. It's a quest that has been obsessing both Gillian and her mother for their whole lives, which threatens to destroy the team and perhaps endanger their lives.
AP: "All the odds and ends are sorted here. But the main focus is that threat to the team. The thought of them existing without each other would be terrible."
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