The most critically derided drama of the summer – quite possibly the most critically derided drama ever – was BBC 1’s Bonekickers. A team of “sexy” archaeologists (pictured below), who all look as if they are about to sleep or have just slept with each other, find that the superficially tedious business of sifting mud draws them into extraordinary adventures. It was a Robert Altman caricature made flesh: The Da Vinci Code meets Time Team, The Antiques Roadshow meets Scooby-Doo.

For once, our slobbish media grandees got their just deserts. They underestimated the intelligence of the public, and viewers fled in their millions from scripts that appeared to have been written by a teenager who learned English from the Cartoon Channel.

When the archaeologists dug up scimitars and medieval coins that seemed to show a battle between Crusaders and Saracens had taken place in – er – Somerset, one cried, “In the middle of the bloody English countryside. We have a medieval riddle to solve! So we start digging!”

“They couldn’t have been fighting Saracens here!” his colleague insisted. “That’s just nuts!”

It wasn’t, of course, and academics were soon up against a fanatically racist white Christian sect which was searching for fragments of the True Cross. “Mind-bogglingly dreadful,” said The Guardian. “Rubbish,” said The Times. The authors have the right to fail, said the man from The Independent, but “I’m not sure that it was wise of them to exercise it so vigorously”.