Bonekickers

Bonekickers
From left to right: Prof Gregory Parton (Hugh Bonneville), Dr Gillian Magwilde (Julie Graham), Dr Ben Ergha (Adrian Lester) and Viv Davis (Gugu Mbatha-Raw)
Genre	Serial Drama
Created by	Matthew Graham and Ashley Pharoah
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Original language(s)	English
No. of series	1
No. of episodes	6
Release
Original network	BBC One
Original release	8 July 2008 – 12 August 2008
External links
Website

Bonekickers was a BBC drama about a team of archaeologists, set at the fictional Wessex University. It made its début on 8 July 2008 and ran for one series.

It was written by Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes creators Matthew Graham and Ashley Pharoah. It was produced by Michele Buck and Damien Timmer of Mammoth Screen Ltd and co-produced with Monastic Productions. Archaeologist and Bristol University academic Mark Horton acted as the series' archaeological consultant. Adrian Lester has described the programme as "CSI meets Indiana Jones [...] There's an element of the crime procedural show, there's science, conspiracy theories—and there's a big underlying mystery that goes through the whole six-episode series."

Much of the series was filmed in the City of Bath, Somerset, with locations including the University of Bath campus (which does not offer Archaeology courses). Additional locations included Brean Down Fort and Kings Weston House (both for episode 2), Chavenage House for episodes 5 & 6 and Sheldon Manor.

On 21 November 2008 Broadcast magazine revealed the show would not be returning for a second series.

According to unofficial figures, the first episode of the series was watched by 6.8 million viewers, achieving a 31% audience share. This fell to 5.2 million viewers with a 24.3% share in the second week, and 4.6 million with a 21% share in the third. And week four fell again to 4.2 million, a 20% share. Week five dropped to 3.8 million. The final episode saw a slight increase in viewers to 4.3 million.