A US version of Time Team is imminent thanks to a collaboration between Channel 4 International and American public broadcaster PBS. Now, we all know that the Americans like to do things bigger and with a bit more pizazz, so what can we expect? Well, for a start, Tony Robinson will go out the window and in with Dog The Bounty Hunter. Also, I can’t imagine much call for little brushes and trowels. Nope. This version will have huge diggers, monster trucks, fireworks, laser beams and atomic explosives. This is archeology writ big. Of course, the US remix won’t piddle about unearthing ancient latrines in Glossop, but rather, places like Oregon’s Skull Creek Dune and Death Hammer Hernia Ridge in… okay… I made the last one up.

The show will go to air next year or in 2010 and the brains behind the (very successful) show, Tim Taylor, says: “C4i has done a fantastic job in taking the show to international audiences and Time Team on prime-time US television is a real and exciting breakthrough for us. In the US there are an amazing number of archaeological mysteries waiting to be solved and the archaeological heritage is richer than many would guess.”

Fans of the show, brace yourself for dramatic synth-orchestrations in the incidental music, stern voices overs and bombarding information on the screen at all times. Basically, I basing this imagined vision of Time Team USA on the American re-hashes of Supernanny, Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares and Beauty and the Geek. Still, I reckon I’m right.