HIT FRAPPE:

The call of the weird: Knights Templar, comedy accents and giant snails? It must be silly season (Rachel Cooke, 10 July 2008, New Statesman)

I must ring my travel agent. Suddenly, the schedules have turned very weird, which suggests to me that summer is here. When they dish up shows that you instinctively know are the cause of some anxiety for commissioning editors, it's time to stock up on factor 20 and obligingly disappear, thus missing the worst offenders.

On BBC1, a series called Bonekickers (Tuesdays, 9pm) has started. It's by Matthew Graham and Ashley Pharoah, the creators of Life on Mars, and it is seriously loony. I was going to describe it - sarcastically - as CSI meets Channel 4's Time Team, but then I read a piece in which Graham described it in exactly those terms, thus providing a fascinating insight into the creative processes of 21st-century scriptwriters: take two successful shows, stick them in the writerly equivalent of a KitchenAid blender, and try not to wrinkle your nose at the resulting dramatic goo.

Given their work on Life on Mars we were willing to give it a shot, but the protagonists are so psychotically anti-religious that you end up rooting for the evil Christian fundamentalists who are trying to trigger Helter Skelter--presumably not their intent.

Posted by Orrin Judd at July 10, 2008 7:46 AM