Watchification

Apparitions ain’t no Bonekickers, more’s the pity. Martin Shaw! Exorcism! Joe Ahearne! Clearly, this should be an instant BBC classic… but it ain’t.

It looks beautiful. Martin Shaw is great – although it is hard to watch anything he’s in without remembering that the entire cast is put on a strict vegan diet – I spend most of my time assuming everyone on screen is wistfully imagining bacon. Because it’s Joe Ahearne the characters are thunderingly written, it’s creepy, and it looks lovely.

And yet… it ends up being terrifying and dull, like a powerpoint presentation on staff restructuring. I found myself watching and loving it, and yet also pottering off to do some washing-up. And in any drama that has nuns, that’s a bad sign.

Partly I suspect because the fiendishly complicated plot was broken down into endless scenes which went like this:

MARTIN SHAW: You’re possessed by a demon
DEMON DAD: No I’m not!
MARTIN SHAW: (look of infinite regret with a twinkle) Yes, you are.
DEMON DAD: No, I’m not! (weeps tears of blood)

When one of these scenes takes place in a lighting shop, your heart sinks. Yes, it’s so that Satan can switch all the lights off at the end of the scene (spooky), but it’s all so mundane. You really don’t get a sense of apocalypse when you’re clocking the “sale” tags on halogen fittings.

Also, the gays don’t come out of it well. Martin Shaw has a young seminary friend who is a bumder and worried that Satan cured his leprosy. When he’s kicked out of the church he goes to a gay sauna and gets skinned alive by a demon. Which is tragic and poignant etc etc and yet feels Very Old Fashioned and Not Much Fun. I thought we’d moved beyond telly dramas that show All Gays End Unhappily?

It was probably making some kind of point higher than that, but it didn’t register. And even in a gay sauna, the sounds of someone being skinned alive would attract attention – at the very least from pottering old voyeurs who mistook the screaming for someone having a Jolly Good Time.

I’ll carry on watching though. It is, after all, Joe Ahearne, plus it has a nun in it who’s dead snippy.

Magwilde! What a woman! Not since Heinrich Schliemann accidentally laid waste to the ruins of Troy in the 1870s has archaeology had such a hero.

In last night’s thrilling climax, she finally found Excalibur… and broke it. Lest we forget, this is a woman who’s been responsible for the destruction of

• The True cross
• Boudicca’s body
• The bones of Joan of Arc
• and a few temples and shit along the way.

Last night’s episode was more jam-packed than an arse at an orgy. Ancient Masonic conspiracies! Dexter Fletcher eaten by rats! A threat to civilisation! Men in masks! Gay Tennyson! A water-soluble vicar!

So, it was a shame that at some point in the script development process, someone said “But what’s Gillian’s Journey in this episode?”. So, as well as scampering through history like an old lady at a jumble sale, Gilly also had to shout at all her friends until they left, and then came back a few scenes later to prove that she was Redeemed.

“No one walks out on me!” she screamed. “Get out!” she roared, “You’re fired!” she raged. And then, like a dumped twink, she promptly started texting them.

Then she went to see her mother, and discovered that she’d handily put her in the kind of old people’s home that includes a secret cellar under the floorboards of every room. I would love to see the brochure – “Guests are welcome to bring personal belongings, small items of furniture, and millennia-spanning enigmas. No pets.”

All the while, Magwilde is being hunted by a secret society run by Justin Timberlake, who turns out to be a torture coffin kept in a stately home. Again, imagine the signs – “Visitors are reminded that we open at 9.30 on Wednesdays to allow for staff training and ritual execution”. Luckily, Dolly Patron comes to her aid, shouting “My head is full of dates” (a remarkable fruit-related image) followed by “Don’t mess with me, I’m an archaeologist!”

There was an end. It involved a cathedral! Fighting! Scuba diving! Gillian as the Lady of the Lake! The sudden appearance of the Reverend Exposition!

“Reverend Abrams!” gasped the Bonekickers. “Who?” I gasped. “I have no idea who you are.” It was like forgetting to include the caretaker in an episode of Scooby Doo. But luckily, he fell in the water and promptly vanished. Like their viewing figures.