It asks us to extend our intellect beyond the usual car chase/shoot-em-ups/bedroom scenes that are the standard made-for-TV miniseries. And that's the basic problem with Dig's broad popularity.

It's also a fact that archaeological digging around the Temple Mount has religious and political hazards. Where Dig deviates from these facts is that these people are quite peaceful and content to wait for the Messiah to come (return) rather than take an active art in destroying the current occupants of the Temple Mount. Another fact is that there are evangelical Christians who support the Jewish Temple Society and also look for the Temple to be rebuilt. After all, who doesn't like conspiracy theories that have a veneer of fact? It is a fact that there is a Temple Society that is actively searching for the ashes of the Red Heifer and training students in ancient Temple ritual to resume sacrifices when the Third Temple is rebuild. John Preston's recreation of the Sutton Hoo dig - the greatest Anglo-Saxon discovery ever in Britain - brilliantly and comically dramatizes three months of intense activity when locals fought outsiders, professionals thwarted amateurs, and love and rivalry flourished in equal measure.Overall, I like Dig. As the dig proceeds against a background of mounting national anxiety, it becomes clear that this is no ordinary find. But on a riverside farm in Suffolk there is excitement of another kind: Mrs Pretty, the widowed farmer, has had her hunch proved correct that the strange mounds on her land hold buried treasure. In the long hot summer of 1939 Britain is preparing for war.

'An enthralling story of love and loss' Robert Harris

A brilliantly realised account of the most famous archeological dig in British history, now a major motion picture starring Ralph Fiennes, Carey Mulligan and Lily James.

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