Geekshow

TV Review: Primeval

The British series where the past truly meets the present.

Primeval was honestly a series I was not crazy about from the start. A lot of people raved about the series, but it just seemed like Torchwood with dinosaurs instead of aliens. And basically, that is the premise of the show.

Nick Cutter, an evolutionary biologist, is called in by the goverment to help with a rash of strange animals randomly appearing throughout the city. It is discovered that there is an event called an anomoly that allows creatures from the past to slip into modern day. These creatures have to be hearded back through their anomoly and back to their own time before everyday citizens catch on to just what is happening.

Cutter assembles a team from the university that works together to assist the goverment, return the animals to their timelines, to study the creatures, and the anomolies. His team inlcudes: his right-hand man, Stephen (James Murray); herpetologist Abby (Hannah Spearritt); and Connor (Andrew-Lee Potts), the equipment and tech specialist. They also have a department liason, Claudia (Lucy Brown), a love interest for Cutter, whose wife was presumed dead eight years ago.

As I mentioned, the show was a little slow to start. I had a hard time rooting for Nick, played by Douglas Henshall. There was something about him that I just couldn’t get behind in the beginning. The episodes themselves were pretty formulaic and the effects were impressive, for a television budget.

And then we started to learn more about the anomolies. They weren’t just portals to the past, but also to the future. And when a future creature is released onto the populus that is the most honed and evolved hunter imaginable, the show got interesting.

Not only did we learn that the anomolies could open up a path to the future, we also discover how the smallest mistake can change things indefinitely. At the end of Series 1, Claudia and Cutter are finally starting to realize their feelings for one another when one tiny mistake through an anomaly removes Claudia from existence. And replaces her with her doppelganger, Jenny. And what was brilliant about it, is that it stuck. Series 2 wasn’t all about finding out how to get Claudia back. She is gone and no one but Cutter remembers who she is.

Even the way Cutter’s group worked with the government changed. Rather than at University, they were in a modern building and state-of-the-art lab with resources and facilities they were never privy to previously.

More intrigue is added to the show by Cutter’s presumed dead wife, Helen, played by Juliet Aubrey. She is almost a Gaius Baltar type character – there is something about her that just makes me seethe disgust. She is a character you love to hate, and yet, are never able to really figure out what exactly she is up to.

Series 1 is just six episodes, and Series 2 is seven. I believe Series 3 has already begun on ITV in Britain, and according to the BBC America website, will be coming to BBC America sometime this year. With limited runs on Torchwood and Doctor Who this year, British sci-fi fans are itching for a return of some really enjoyable television. And Primeval has proved to be just that – well worth the wait.