Tim Haines and Adrian Hodges are the creative forces behind the successful ITV dinosaur series PRIMEVAL, the second series of which has recently concluded with a few shocks and the deaths of not only the villain (or one of them at least), but also Stephen, one of the central quartet of dinosaur wranglers. We got some time to talk to them in an ITV building in rainy London and found two instantly likeable men relaxed and happy to talk about their show, whilst trying not to give too much away about what we can expect from the third series. They're clearly thrilled with the success of their show and were only to pleased to answer questions put to them, often overlapping answers and finishing off each others' thoughts.

We started out by asking about that death of Stephen and what brought it about. Adrian explained that as soon as the notion of him having an affair with Helen Cutter arose there was a certain finite quality to his story, his fate becoming almost inevitable and chasing dinosaurs is an inherently dangerous job. Tim agreed that they were not going to use the fact that it was a show with time travel to get around problems like the death of a major character so with it established that Stephen was definitely not coming back we asked about whether Claudia was gone forever and Jenny here to stay. Adrian teased us by saying that ‘The issue has not been finished with.’

When asked who decides which monsters go into the show Tim was quick to point out, “I have to interest Adrian. That’s what I think is the driving point. ‘How about this?’ ‘Oh that’s boring.’ ‘Well how about this then?’” and Adrian agreed “Tim is without question the creature expert. My job is to try and see how that might work in terms of context. We have very few disagreements about it do we? There are certain creatures that you look at and you think well…”. Tim added that “One of our things was that in the first series we very definitely didn’t want to do too many creatures that were very familiar. We wanted them to be recognisable as creatures from the past but not necessarily things that were, you know, T-Rexs or raptors or whatever, but then when it came to the beginning of the second series we thought well actually maybe it’s time to go with something classic, so the raptors made their appearance.”

Discussing how long it takes to get a creature from the drawing board to the screen Tim said that a ten week timescale was normal, made up of sculpting a model of the creature, scanning that into the computer to create a computerised model, animating the model, skinning it (adding the colours and textures) and finally compositing it into the live action. Of course this is subject to change should ITV suddenly decide they want the show to go out four weeks early, something that has happened. Tim pointed out that the special effects budget did limit some of what they attempted to achieve "The thing about doing this level of graphics for television is that, without being flippant, feature films do have an endless budget. What they do is they design shots, don’t like it, send it back and start it again. They waste millions getting their shots absolutely right. That’s what features do. That’s why they cost seventy, eighty million to make. We have a locked off budget. Therefore you have to be very, very clever and very, very planned about what the creatures do, what your effects do."

We wondered if they thought that the success of their show had altered the perception of genre shows within ITV, a channel that, in recent decades at least, was not known for its output in that area. Adrian suggested that it wasn’t just the TV companies that were wary. He said that the audience had always believed that science fiction worked, but that writers were also reluctant to work in the genre. He said that when he spoke to others about doing sci fi they asked him “wouldn’t you rather be doing a nice Dickens?”. They both now firmly believe that the success of American imports like LOST and HEROES, but also, more importantly, homegrown primetime hits like DOCTOR WHO and PRIMEVAL have made a permanent impact on the viability of new UK science fiction shows.

When it was suggested that the team had storylines prepared for seven series, Adrian denied their plans went quite that far. “That would be an exaggeration. We don’t have plans for seven seasons. I’m not saying that we wouldn’t have plans for seven seasons. We certainly have storylines going on into the future. We know perfectly well what we’re doing in series three and we have some strong ideas for series four. We have other ideas that float about but they aren’t in any coherent shape.”

So what about series three? What does that have in store for us? Well for starters it’s going to be longer with ten episodes, something that Tim believes to be about the maximum number of episodes that they could produce without needing to radically restructure the way that they work. Adrian added that “Ten is a significant challenge. We’re thrilled that ITV want to go with ten and it’s a major challenge for us to keep on proving that we can generate the storylines that we need.”

The creature that Tim was willing to admit was coming up in series three was the spellchecker worrying Pristichampus which he described as a pumped up, running prehistoric crocodile, but during the conversation regarding animating creatures he mentioned that they were doing feathers on the Titanus and then realised he was saying more than he ought. A quick google of that and you come up with a large beetle (not many feathers there) and a large bird reminiscent of a dodo. That's where our money is.

There is also to be a new character to replace Stephen, a military officer called Captain Becker who is to be played by Ben Mansfield and we are assured will be a thinking soldier rather than just a “lughead”. He’ll be joining the cast, all of whom will be returning (unless their characters got eaten anyway). His inclusion is in contrast to series two in which, as Adrian explained “we made a very conscious decision to dial back slightly on the number of military personnel because we wanted our main people to be involved as much as possible and obviously the reality of these situations is that with creatures from the past if you have a lot of military men with efficient guns the creatures would be blown to pieces on a fairly continual basis. So we tried to see how the balance would work and I think we probably would admit that we got the balance slightly wrong in series two.”

Tim also promised that we would learn more about the anomalies. The team aren’t willing to give away all the secrets about how and why they work because then the mystery will be lost, but he said that” in the third series we will be pushing on in certain areas of knowledge about the anomalies. More very important facts about the anomalies will be revealed.”

Series three will also bring a creature designed by a member of the audience as a result of a competition being run on itv.com. The winning design will be worked up by the special effects team and will star in one of the episodes. A link to all the details can be found below. Anxious to stand a better chance of winning with our effort we asked if the story for the episode was written and therefore there was a particular kind of creature that was more likely to win. Tim quickly pointed out that this was not the case, “That’s an interesting question. The storyline of that episode is there, yeah, that has been created, as in fact many of the storylines are, to allow a lot of leeway in terms of the way that the creature might behave or the way it might act. We’re not going to want to change the storyline, obviously, to accommodate the creature. It is unlikely that we would have to.” Adrian added that “The storyline has been created very much with the awareness that we would have to put the creature in there. It isn’t a rigid thing where you wouldn’t be able to fit certain kinds of creatures in. We have no preconceived idea what that creature might be. None at all.”

So no help there. Was there not any help that they could give? “We have a lot of flexibility there. Tim assured us. “ He is a made up creature. We made this clear that we didn’t want you to go back to your dinosaur books and just produce one of them. It’s about a made up creature and it can really pretty well be anything you want, have six legs, eight legs or two or seventy-two.”