It’s Information Thursday, and this afternoon I’ll come back and edit this entry with some opinion on the exciting Relic: Guardians of the Museum which starts at 4:35pm on BBC1 this afternoon.

Here we go then:

• Three kids go to the British Museum in the dead of night where they’re met by ghostly tour guide Agatha, played by Gemma Arrowsmith in rather whatever the aunt equivilent of ‘avuncular’ fashion.
• The kids are up against the Dark Lord who goes uncredited and is rather less successful in terms of characterisation. Rather unoriginal and uninteresting.
• Lots of Scooby Doo running around the museum running away from people dressed in robes = Good. Kids poorly acting as if they are scared = bad.
•  Agatha leads the team round various exhibits, gives a quick description and then they are whisked away to a point in history where they perform a challenge. Challenges are basically exactly the sort of thing you got in Trapped but with a historical twist (answering true/false questions set by Cleopatra, trying to avoid “scorpions” on a historical dig, hunting for turquiose in an egyptian tomb). None of these challenges are going to set the world alight, but they’ve at least put a little bit of effort into the set-ups and, indeed, the sets.
• Completing a task means that all the kids get to see a “vision” – a piece of film about one of the objects in the museum. If they fail the task then only one of the kids gets to see it, and will need to try and remember and communicate as much of it as possible to their teammates.
• After three challenges, the Dark Lord is summoned to the Great Court and asks the kids questions individually about the three visions they have seen. If they get three right before they get three wrong then the Dark Lord is defeated, the kids become guardians of the museum and win themselves a golden scarab. If they get three wrong then they become a new exhibit themselves forever.
• Not bad as edutainment goes, really. It’s a pity the challenges aren’t a bit more interesting, though.

And later: Poll results and Bothersop information and Fun Thing Found on Youtube Thursday. Oh yes!