Few years ago, when we were visiting our friends in NYC, I started looking for some new TV series to watch (besides Grey’s Anatomy and other similar shows) and stumbled upon Bones. As a personal preference, I always go for some medical stuff, crime/investigation or law shows, so it’s clear why I didn’t stop watching the show after viewing the first episode.
Even if I didn’t start watching expecting anything special (there are tens of TV series I could only watch for few minutes and stopped torturing myself afterward), it did get me hooked. I loved the mix of drama and comedy, the smart dialogues and even the ‘gore’ of their investigations.
The story is pretty simple: if an experienced forensic anthropologist can lead various expeditions to uncover skeletons from older times, same knowledge can be used to help in investigating more recent murders. At the end of the day the bones are still bones and whatever trauma they went through, can lead to some serious breakthroughs. This is the reason Temperance Brennan (the anthropologist we talk about) is working together with the FBI (represented by special agent Seeley Booth) to uncover the mysteries of various murders and bring the criminals behind the bars.
Her team, made up of other smart and quirky scientists work together to solve some pretty difficult cases, making the ‘non-believer’ Booth realize their huge potential and the fact they do provide some excellent results.
Each episode brings in more mystery, while a separate storyline, more personal, is also unfolding.
You might thing the series idea is totally original, but it’s based on the work of a true forensic anthropologist (and novelist) named Kathy Reichs, who has created the Temperance Brennan character for her novels and has based a lot of the ‘fiction’ on her actual scientific work, trying to make the novels as accurate as possible from a scientific standpoint.
Most of the viewers care less about the science in the show and are won by the various and complex characters the story relies on. It’s impossible not to fall in love with them, each has his own qualities and charm, while together they do make a nice and quirky team.
Some of the scenes might seem ‘too much’ for sensitive people, but just remember it’s a ‘movie’ and you should be fine. You’ll surely have a great time trying to play detective together with the investigators and seeing their own live stories unfold in front of your eyes.
