Ali is due to have his colonoscopy this afternoon. He had to take mega doses of laxative last night, hasn't had anything to eat since 4pm yesterday, and now can't drink again until after the procedure. I wish there was something I could do to protect him from this, would take his place in an instant... but I can't.

To keep my mind from obsessing about it, watched Bonekickers from last night on the BBCiPlayer. You know how things can look sooo good on a trailer and then within a millisecond of starting to watch an episode you can tell that they are sooo bad? This is one of those.

The plot is ludicrous... they didn't just invent a love affair between Boudicca and a Roman soldier, but also suggested that the Roman had kept her secretly in a chamber below the Roman baths in Bath, and had invented an incendiary bomb many centuries in advance of their actual invention AND that he was responsible for the burning of Rome in revenge for the death of his mistress.

The acting is poor and the writing too... actually they crammed a whole series worth of plot and backstory into the space of one hour long episode, and in places this required the actors to deliver an incredible amount of completely fantastical information at a rate of knots. There was a backstory element of a romance between two of the characters which didn't ring true... they didn't behave like people with a history. And there was a lot of banter between rugged professor and young student which would have a real student running for the forms to report him for sexual harrassment... it seemed old fashioned, and inappropriate. He wasn't even witty about it.

The sets were so dreadful, I could have done better with a bit of plaster of paris and a roomful of children... in places it definitely won the award for the least convincing rock and stone in the history of television.

You know how sometimes things are so bad, they're almost good? This isn't like that. It's obvious the people involved have no faith or belief in their product, they simply contrived a television series out of a formula. On paper it might have looked good. On the screen it did NOT.

I cannot believe that the BBC has sunk to this level of awful... didn't anyone see how bad it was? You begin to lose faith in the BBC to withstand the commercial pressures upon it when they broadcast something so unremittingly bad that I can find nothing good to say about it.

And if I spoiled the plot for anyone... you can thank me later for having prevented you from wasting a whole hour of your life.