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PRIMEVAL |
Nick Cutter - Douglas Henshall Jenny Lewis - Lucy Brown Danny Quinn - Jason Flemyng Connor Temple - Andrew Lee Potts Abby Maitland - Hannah Spearritt Sarah Paige - Laila Rouass Helen Cutter - Juliet Aubrey James Lester - Ben Miller Captain Becker - Ben Mansfield Christine Johnson - Belinda Stewart-Wilson 
OTHER PRIMEVAL SEASONS Season 1 Season 3 Season 4 PRIMEVAL CREATOR INTERVIEW Interview OFFICIAL SITE Official Site OTHER TIME TRAVEL SHOWS Doctor Who Journeyman Goodnight Sweetheart Life on Mars Ashes to Ashes Daybreak Doctor Who 
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Episode 1 - First transmitted 28th March 2009An anomaly appears in the heart of the British Museum, inside a statue created by the ancient Egyptians. Out of the anomaly comes a Pristichampus, a crocodile that could switch between two and four legs. It's also carnivorous, so it's up to Cutter and the team, along with their new military minder Captain Becker, to track it down and either kill it or get it back to the anomaly before it chows down on some of London's tourists. Where Season 2 of PRIMEVAL opened with a swaggering, confident, stripped down action fest, this episode sets up a whole new order of things, introducing new characters a new plot arc and a new emphasis. This makes it more like a pilot for a new show, introducing an innocent to a new world that they didn't know existed, in this case egyptologist Sarah Page (played by Laila Rouass). It is most reminiscent of the opening episode of the BBC DOCTOR WHO spin off TORCHWOOD in its set up. This means that the monster of the week story, the Pristichampsus, is a pretty slight thing of crocodile appears, wanders around a bit and then goes home. Hardly the kind of stuff to challenge the brain cells, but then heavy thinking has never been what the show has been about. The introduction of the plot arc involving Lester's new boss, Helen Cutter and a strange artefact from the future, clumsily shoved in with no relevance to the story at hand, so early in the series shows that the makers are going for a mystery to be played out over the extended series. The new angle for this season, that creatures emerging from anomalies are the source of all the world's legends, is laid out early as well. Instead of dino of the week, we're going to have myth of the week. An evolved crocodile is an inspired choice to kick of the new season, especially tying it in with the Egyptian gods, so it is a shame that it is almost as convincing as a sock puppet. This is some of the least convincing CGI that the show has come up with in a while and whilst it might meet the expectations of the yonger audience, nobody else is going to be impressed. The gang are all back and Andrew Lee Potts' Connor immediately makes an impact as the joker of the pack. Ben Miller's Lester gets some nice lines to deliver with bitchy relish, but the rest of the cast are fairly colourless. This episode is mainly to introduce the new character of Sarah Page, of course, but she is yet to be the star of the show and the others might have got more to work with. The shock and trauma of losing their friend at the end of the last season is barely even played lip service before everyone just shrugs and gets on with chasing the latest dinosaur. Anyway, PRIMEVAL is back, but it's going to have to work a lot harder than this to live up to the fun nonsense that has gone before it. TopEpisode 2 - First transmitted 4th April 2009Cutter and the team develop a mathematical model for predicting the appearance of anomalies and it leads them to an abandoned house where two boys disappeared years earlier. That was caused by a previous anomaly appearance, an anomaly that has left something behind. After the disappointing opening episode, PRIMEVAL bounces back with a story that is full of the usual family fun that we have come to expect from the show. It goes for a spooky feel, taking its cues from horror movies (girls in red dresses from DON'T LOOK NOW being the most obvious lift) with lots of moments involving something being in the room and closing in on our heroes without them being able to see it. The creature (something like a bat with no wings) is much better rendered than last week's supercroc and its ability to change colour (like a chameleon) makes it a scarier proposition in the enclosed surroundings of the house. We were left wondering, however, why it chose not to attack Abby when she was unconscious and vulnerable, but was willing to attack anyone else who entered. The plot allowed for the most liked characters (Connor, Abby and Jenny) to shoulder the story, whilst Cutter took a back seat. The fact that Jason Flemyng's cop quit his job before the end and believed that his brother might have gone through the original anomaly probably means that we haven't seen the last of him. This week's appearance by Helen Cutter has turned her from the queen of dino-survival to master of accelerated cloning (no, really - the 'coming next week' bit confirmed it) and Juliet Aubrey's performance gets even more Cruella De Vil every time she appears. There also seems to be a problem with day turning to night and back again for no apparent reason. Still, this is the PRIMEVAL of old and we're glad to see it return. TopEpisode 3 - First transmitted 11th April 2009An anomaly in a hospital sets free a group of burrowing dinosaurs that are harmless but for their habit of biting through anything in their way, including electric cables. Whilst Cutter and Abby deliver a (human) baby and Connor and Becker try to capture the dinos, Helen Cutter and her team of clones take over the ARC and are determined to destroy it. She also wants to kill her husband to save the future. When PRIMEVAL first burst onto the screen in DOCTOR WHO's wake, it was a fun and frivolous dinosaur-a-week chunk of nonsense, but it has continued to grow in stature from that time and this is one of its finest hours to date. The opening half in the hospital is pure dino-of-the-week nonsense and both bright and silly, but very entertaining, played for laughs and with the cast on top comic form. Then everything changes as Helen takes over the ARC. Apart from the fact that someone ought to give Juliet Aubrey a moustache that she could elaborately twirl whilst chaining girls to the train tracks, this is meatier, darker stuff. Her actions are beyond justification, and yet she does have a justification. This is the first time that her motivation has been clear, if misguided. It doesn't take the character beyond the two-dimensional moustache-twirling, but at least it gives her a purpose. It also gives her an action that will take anyone who hasn't heard the spoiler rumours completely by surprise and this is where the increase in stature and quality of the show comes in. The last few minutes have a resonance that might have been hard to imagine in those early shows of Season 1. It's a show-changing moment and it will be interesting to see where it goes from here. That said, the 'coming next week' snippet looks pretty good stuff as well. TopEpisode 4 - First transmitted 18th April 2009Repairing the damage done to the ARC by Helen Cutter's abortive attack proves to be less difficult than repairing the emotional damage. The team doesn't get a lot of time, however, as an anomaly opens up at a freight airport and a giant predator gets loose with a television crew in hot pursuit. Following the epic events of last week this episode could be forgiven for being a major letdown, but it proves to be far from that. Having a Giganotosaurus (basically a big T-Rex) running around smashing stuff up is always going to be entertaining and whilst PRIMEVAL is never going to be JURASSIC PARK it borrows an awful lot from it including car/dino races and chases, big eyes looking in through the windows, cars being knocked onto their roofs.... That's a lot of 'homaging', but it's all done in a great spirit of fun and brio and gets away with it easily. The beastie in question is well realised by the effects team (although some of the helicopter shots are a bit iffy) and the remaining characters step up to the plate with Andrew Lee Potts and Lucy Brown shouldering the new responsibilities with panache. And we were right when we said that Jason Flemying would be back as Danny Quinn. He is set to become the new permanent fixture. Not as all round excellent as last week's episode, then, but thoroughly entertaining all the same. TopEpisode 5 - First transmitted 2nd May 2009Christine Johnson makes her move to take over the ARC and recover the artefact that Connor and Sarah have been cleaning up and which appears to contain a map of all the anomalies. Danny takes his team on the run to an abandoned ministry safe house. It turns out that there was a reason it was abandoned - an anomaly that lets through a family of Phorusrhacids, giant flightless birds with a taste for flesh, any flesh. This is a full on action episode that doesn't make that much sense (an anomaly just happens to open at just the time that Quinn and the team show up? How likely is that?), but doesn't really have to because of the pace and the excitement. It barely stops long enough to catch a breath and is all the better for that. What it most resembles for most of its length is a zombie move, Night of the Living Rocs perhaps, with a small group trapped in a small building under assault from determined, powerful, but mindless attackers. It is also a set up that will be familiar to fans of the B-movie TREMORS. The handheld camera style, rapid cross cutting and washed out colours are all the order of the day for this kind of monster action. The giant birds are certainly an improvement on the one that appears in Harryhausen's MYSTERIOUS ISLAND technically speaking, only a couple of ropy CGI shots spoiling the effect. The solution to the problem is pretty obvious from early on and it takes a while for the characters to work it out, but these are merely quibbles with another sharp piece of family entertainment that even gets Sarah and Abby into very fetching dresses that they have to rip off. There's even humour as Lester gets his own back on Ms Johnson. This episode really is the full package. TopEpisode 6 - First transmitted 9th May 2009An anomaly opens up in a scrapyard and a dragon comes through. It's not really a dragon it's a Dracorex, but it could easily be mistaken for a dragon by the superstitious, much like the knight who follows it. Wandering London, he causes havoc wherever he goes, chases by Danny and Connor whilst Abby attempts to save the dinosaur he has injured. Sarah takes a historian's dream trip through the anomaly in search of information about the knight that might persuade him to return to his own time. PRIMEVAL finally brings the team up against a person from another time and it does so by cleverly playing on the image of St George and the dragon. A dragon-like dinosaur wandering through an anomaly into medieval times and then being chased into our time by a knight cleverly manages to keep a dinosaur in the episode. It is clear, however, that the interest was really in the knight and so the Dracorex (a real dinosaur apparently) doesn't get that much screen time. Unfortunately, the knight doesn't get a lot of character development. As a mercenary suffering guilt for the men he has killed and looking for some sort of redemption, he has a lot of potential, but he is forced to wander about fighting random people for no readily apparent reason. It's only when Sarah gets back and explains the backstory in a couple of lumpy expositions that he gains any depth at all, which is a shame. Still, there are incidental pleasures to be had and the 'you and whose army?' gag has been a long time coming. TopEpisode 7 - First transmitted 16th May 2009Giant wasp/ant things from the future show up at a car testing circuit and Abby's brother manages to find himself trapped in the future on the far side of the anomaly that brought them there. Abby, Connor, Danny and Becker go after him only to find that the future they have arrived in is filled with the future predators that have proven to be so deadly in every previous encounter. Their chances of getting back are definitely not looking good. Forget the plot, feel the action. After the nonsense of last week's George and Dragon fable PRIMEVAL takes a trip back to the future with its washed out wasteland and its future predators, only this time the predators have company in the shape of a giant wasp/ant thing that not only is pretty nasty on its own, but also manages to have some very slimy giant maggot larvae stolen straight from the old DOCTOR WHO story The Green Death. We never really got on with the future predators, but they are well realised her and the wasp/ant things are really good (although how the maggots and the little wasp/ant things fit into the life cycle is a little off). It starts off unpromisingly with the anomaly appearing in yet another hangar (can't these people afford another location?), but once action switches to the future it's played at a full run, never letting up long enough for the audience to stop and think about the plot and its attendant holes. The running plot arc is kind of shoehorned in at the end, but this is the kind of quality fun romp that we've come to expect and that's made the show so successful. TopEpisode 8 - First transmitted 23rd May 2009Whilst the rest of the team try to save a camping site full of stag nights and quad bikers from a herd of prehistoric rhinos know as embolotherium, Danny breaks into Christine Johnson's headquarters to free the woman from the future that is being held there. She is desperate to get into the ARC to warn Lester about something, but is she all that she appears to be? This week's PRIMEVAL is surprisingly dull. It's the fault of the chosen monster of the week. The rhinos are herbivores and don't do much except stand around looking big. This is not enough to create any sort of threat or excitement. Not until they finally decide to stampede is there any any sense of motion to the plot. The plot then switches gear as action moves to the Anomaly Research Centre. What happens there is somewhat unlikely (and to say more would be spoilerish) but doesn't exactly end well for Christine. TopEpisode 9 - First transmitted 6th June 2009Danny, Connor and Abby go through the anomaly into the future to track down Helen Cutter, leaving Becker and Sarah to check out the newly re-opened anomaly in Christine Johnson's headquarters. Finding Helen, they learn the true extent of her plan in all its insane glory and must chase her through time to prevent her from wiping out the entire human race. The season finale of PRIMEVAL and there is certainly enough activity going on, though how much sense it makes is open to question. There's also not enough time to fit it all in and make for a strong narrative rather than just a string of events, most of which aren't ties up in satisfying conclusions or compelling cliffhangers. There is plenty of monster action as the future predators, the giant flying bug things and raptors all get a look in. There is also a visit to the oldest ancestors of man, which at least is taken through to its inevitable end and has a certain power (though not as much as it ought to have). The longest running and, following the death of Nick Cutter, somewhat redundant, storyline is tied up (though again in somewhat unsatisfying manner), but all the majority of the characters are left in harm's way and there is the small matter of cleaning up the fossil timeline to be considered since the community of early hominids found fossilised in death will currently be found with a modern human skeleton and an out of time raptor one. There's also the usual amount of nonsense to take for granted such as the fact that they only take one gun per team, a bunch of torch batteries can do the job of a car battery, raptors would leave a dead kill meal in order to chase living beings etc, but if you can't suspend your disbelief then you wouldn't have gotten this far with the series anyway. PRIMEVAL's future is in doubt due to the financial climate (it's special effects are expensive and advertising revenues on ITV are down), but it would be a shame not to find out what happens next in this entertaining, if ultimately disposable, series. Top |
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