Today I start a series of
overviews of ITV's science-fiction adventure series Primeval, which debuted ten years ago today.
I was fascinated with dinosaurs
when I was a kid, so this show came out at just the right time for me. My love
of all things prehistoric stemmed from the BBC's Walking with franchise, co-created by Tim Haines, who was
also one of Primeval's co-creators.
The show sadly was never renewed
in 2011, nor was its Canadian spin-off picked up after one season. Primeval largely seems to have fallen by
the wayside since. While it was a far from perfect show, it was still a pretty
big deal for ITV, a channel which hardly ever makes high concept drama of this
sort. The show did also last for five seasons, far more than ITV's subsequent
attempts like Demons or Jekyll & Hyde.
This series of reviews will
revisit this old favourite of mine, and hopefully might tempt a few readers out
here to check out or else revisit the show themselves.
Primeval centres around a sudden outburst of wormholes that begin
opening across England. These wormholes (called anomalies) lead to the distant
past or the future and allow all manner of weird creatures to enter the 21st
century. An assortment of people become involved in the phenomenon and are
hastily recruited by the British Home Office to contain the creature incursions,
while keeping the anomalies' existence a secret from the public.
The team is led by Professor Nick
Cutter (Douglas Henshall), a palaeontologist whose wife Helen (Juliet Aubrey)
vanished eight years previously. He's aided by his assistant Stephen (James
Murray), wide-eyed student Connor (Andrew Lee Potts) and herpetologist Abby
(Hannah Spearritt).
Primeval's first series doesn't really have much of a story arc,
apart from Cutter trying to find his wife. The mythology of the show, such as
it was, wouldn't really be expanded on until future series. Series One acts
more like a police procedural with prehistoric fauna instead of criminals. When
I was younger, I felt Series One was one of the weaker ones for this reason, as
I didn't get as much of a sense of drive from it as I got from subsequent
series. On reflection this mentality has changed somewhat, though I'll expand
more on that in future reviews.
The series pilot is a bit messy
as they try to introduce every main character at once. We have an investigation
into rogue predator attacks (a Gorgonopsid from the Permian), a local boy
discovering a winged lizard, the introduction of the Home Office and the
subsequent cover-up, and a foray into the Permian where the remains of a
human campsite are found, setting up the series finale.
Cramming all this into 45 minutes,
along with every major character, comes off as a bit of a misstep as it leaves
the show feeling overly-ambitious and too thinly spread as a result. It does
however leave later episodes a chance to specialise more in what Primeval does better: the creature
attacks.
Given it's Framestore and
Impossible Pictures, the special effects are pretty impressive for a TV show.
There are a few moments though that feel a bit too gimmicky - moments where a
monster will lunge straight at the camera, as if the show is trying to milk
some cheesy, non-existent 3D feature. The Walking
with series were portrayed as documentaries, so the subjects behaved in a
more naturalistic fashion. Here, the prehistoric creatures play the role of
movie monsters; the more frenetic pace doesn't gel quite as with the real
environments, making the creatures seem a bit more artificial. Not that this is
a huge turn-off if you watch Primeval
with a mind solely to be entertained.
Kudos to the writers for
generally avoiding the more cliched dinosaurs and sabre-toothed cats, at least
for this series. Instead we get relatively obscure Permian and Carboniferous
monsters, as well as some Cretaceous sealife. Dodos show up briefly, but this
quickly swerves into a parasite horror story. While I like that the show tries
to leave its comfort zone a few times, I found this plot a little too
outlandish even for a show like Primeval
- the show even tries to work in some Devil-possession-overtones with a deep voice and purple eyes. The end result is pretty laughable, which is especially unfortunate as the episode in question is meant to be a tragedy. Furthermore, there's a flock of dodos wandering from
one anomaly to another in the past, no doubt spreading their parasites to God
knows how many time periods, but this is never remarked upon.
The series finale really takes a
turn though with the introduction of the terrifying Future Predator. The homages
to the Alien and Predator franchises are pretty stark, but the conception of the
creature itself is still effective. The Predators (who would go on to be a
recurring threat) are a frightening glimpse into the future evolution of life
on earth. It's quite a bleak statement for a prime time show watched by kids,
though Doctor Who had helped pave the
way with its own conceptions of a future gone to shit. It also culminates in an
exhilarating creature-fight, ending the series on a strong note.
In terms of character, Nick,
Helen and James Lester (Ben Miller) are the standouts. Douglas Henshall strikes
a great balance between gruffness and endearment with his character. Cutter's
more interested in the anomalies than having good relations with the army or
the government (or even his colleagues), but there are some nice moments of
humanity here and there. Two of my favourites are him rejecting Helen's offer
to run away into the past ("You call yourself a scientist?" "I
call myself a human being.") and consoling Connor after one of his friends
is killed by a parasite. Henshall also gives the character a sense of
authority, making for a good leading man.
His wife, Helen, is an enigmatic
figure with no clear allegiance. Juliet Aubrey plays to her strengths with a
beguiling yet weirdly sinister turn. Season One is definitely Helen's finest
due to her ambiguity; she doesn't come off as malevolent, just preferring not
to have to put up with the government telling her what to do. Her behaviour
around Nick throws up questions of whether her isolation has made her this way,
or whether this was the cause of their estrangement before her disappearance.
And then of course there's the
fantastic Ben Miller, whose cold detachment causes plenty of friction between
himself and Cutter. Like Helen, Lester is at his most fascinating in this
series. He really comes across as a guy who could disappear someone if he felt
they posed a threat to national security. He also gets all the best lines: "You
spend all your life preparing for every single eventuality - up to and
including alien invasion - and this
happens. So much for thinking outside the bloody box."
The rest of the cast are decent,
doing the best they can with their material, but the writing doesn't help them
much. Stephen's a more stolid counterpart to the maverick Cutter, but often
comes across as a piece of male eye candy. Connor can be downright irritating
at times. Abby and Claudia (Lucy Miller) are decent, but like Stephen, they
didn't stand out much for me.
Primeval Series One is one that I enjoyed more on a rewatch than I
thought I would. I'll get around to the later series at some point, but for the
moment I can say I thoroughly enjoyed revisiting this series, despite its
weaknesses and many lapses in internal logic. Worth checking out if you're a
prehistory fan.
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