Much scorn being poured on this first episode by Serious Scientific People. Personally, I liked it and will be watching.

I never really thought they were going to do a serious dramatic version of one of those "oh look, we've found a small brown lump of something, this is tremendously significant since it proves there were people living in Cheltenham in the Middle Ages" programmes that the Countess loves to shout at so much. There are, after all, plenty of real ones, and even those have resorted to making wilder and wilder assumptions in a desperate attempt to make themselves sound interesting to the average pleb like me. "Was the Amesbury Archer the King Of Stonehenge?!?!!" So I was primed for something that was not entirely plausible in the real world, and since that's what I look for in fiction I wasn't disappointed.

There was mysticism, but no magic, unless you count the fact that it took the cross with the broken arm significantly longer to catch fire than the others. (I was a little let down by the reset button, even though I was expecting it. Some day I'd like to see one of these things where the sacred relic isn't destroyed/buried/flooded/taken to another dimension at the end, and the world has to get used to the fact that something strange does exist. And I'd like it written by someone who has neither a specifically religious nor an atheist agenda, please.) There was a neat little reference when First Loony, with sword and long billowy coat, lopped off someone's head and staggered back against a wall and for a split second I *almost* expected lightning and smashing windows. And there are interesting characters, at least on first viewing. It will remain to be seen whether they can keep it from getting too samey.

And, of course, it also had the huge advantage of not being nuWho. :)