The program is a mystery/thriller, telling the story of a series of case files, solved weekly, by an unlikely alliance between Dr. Temperance Brennan’s forensic anthropology team at the Jeffersonian Institute (a thinly veiled Smithsonian Institution) and the FBI.

Dr. Brennan’s team brings scientific expertise (and an outsider perspective) to the world of criminal investigation, while Agent Seeley Booth brings human intuition, expertise, and “people skills” to the table. The result is an often strained relation (the two sides don’t always understand one another), but the results are better than either side of the team could accomplish on their own.

Fans of the Brennan books have expressed their dismay that the character in the series only shares the name with the character in the books, and none of their life histories or characteristics match.

In an ironic reversal, the on-screen Temperance Brennan moonlights as an author, writing about the adventures of a fictional forensic anthropologist named Kathy Reichs.

Dr. Temperance Brennan is a brilliant, but lonely, anthropologist whom is approached by an ambitious FBI agent, named Seely Booth, to help the bureau solve a series of unsolved crimes by identifying the long-dead bodies of missing persons by their bone structure. But both Agent Booth and Dr. Brennan and her team come up again a variety of interference from red tape, corruption, and local noncooperation.

One of the many CSI-like “procedural” series of the 2005-2006 TV season, the weekly, hour-long Fox network offering Bones was inspired by the career of real-life forensic anthropologist Kathy Reichs. Emily Deschanel headed the series as Dr. Temperance Brennan, an attractive forensic anthropologist (and part-time novelist) working for the Jeffersonian Institution. Because of her skill in using skeletal remains to determine such matters as the cause of death and the profile of the killer, Dr. Brennan was frequently summoned by the police to help them solve cold-case murders in the Medico-Legal lab. Her colleagues included brash, profane computer expert Angela Montenegro (Michaela Conlin), youthful insect specialist and obsessive conspiracy buff Zack Addy (Eric Millegan), and by-the-book lab director Dr. Daniel Goodman (Jonathan Adams). Functioning as both Dr. Brennan’s sometime partner and severest critic was ex-army sniper and special government operative Seeley Booth (Angel’s David Boreanaz), who strongly preferred using his own gut instincts rather than scientific theory. Bones was first telecast September 13, 2005. Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide