As news breaks of Jonas Armstrong’s departure from Robin Hood, the breathless hype of the BBC’s press release regarding the third series of this Dodo (“an explosive, nail-biting series finale” and “Robin’s exit will be unmissable”) reminds me that we were sold a similar pup with their supposedly groundbreaking archaeological mystery programme Bonekickers. The parallels between the two programmes are frightening, and as the archaeologists continue to dig themselves ever deeper into the mire (they lost another 300,000 viewers last week) rumours persist that the BBC will give it another chance. So, not surprisingly, the question uppermost in my mind is: why?

What is it about Bonekickers that makes the BBC feel it’s worth another series?

They started with an audience to rival one of their most successful dramas ever – Life on Mars, from the same writing stable. At 6.8 million viewers it even approached some of the smaller audiences of the less popular Doctor Who episodes, which for a mid-week show isn’t bad. Five weeks on and viewing figures show that Bonekickers is just barely seeing off the stiff competition (cough) of Doc Martin repeats on ITV. Yes, it’s taken only five weeks to shed almost 3 MILLION viewers.

If that isn’t a case of the audience voting with their feet I don’t know what is.

So apart from the ludicrous hype, how else does Bonekickers compare with Robin Hood? The really awful, clunky scripts spring to mind. The half-developed, one-dimensional characters (although here you’d have to give extra bad points to Robin Hood. Bonekickers at least has the excuse that its characters are newly-invented. Robin Hood manages to take a historical legend and make the characters LESS rounded than they were before!).

I don’t know how long the BBC can continue to make such overblown promises for their new dramas before the public get wise and avoid even the first episode of new shows. After all, with iPlayer offering a catch-up service for 7 days, anyone can afford to duck the broadcast and wait to see what the critics say, or what the Internet forum buzz is over the next few days.

Bonekickers was supposed to “take history and archaeology and make it sexy, accessible and exciting.” It did none of these things. Unless “sexy” means a middle-aged lech making inappropriate comments about breasts, “accessible” means dumbed-down to the point of inanity and “exciting” means, well, I can’t imagine what it means. Can you?