A British sci-fi series about time travel…. except this series doesn’t screw with your head as much. And it has more dinosaurs, so that’s a plus. For those who haven’t seen it, this will be a non-spoiler review. Or as non-spoiler as I can make it.
Primeval is one of my favorite TV shows. It premiered in 2007 and the finale was in 2011. The premise is that there are these portals in space and time called anomalies that lead to different points of history. They could go back to the Pre-Cambrian or go to thousands of years in the future. It doesn’t go to the future that often, but when it does, we get these nightmare inducing, horrible abominations of existence!
Good luck sleeping after seeing that thing.
Whenever one of these anomalies opens up, a team of specialists arrive to deal with it and whatever creatures come out of it. That team is what the story revolves around. They’re one of the first to discover the anomalies and are assigned to deal with them. The head of the team is Nick Cutter, a professor at a university in the UK. Nick’s assistant, Steven, is a complete bad@$$ and my favorite character of the whole series. There’s Connor, a nerd who’s so darn lovable but so clumsy in his work at the same time. Abby is a zoologist that usually comes up with ideas on how to deal with the creatures. Lester is the director of the operation, as well as a liaison to the government. Lester starts out as a complete jerk. He was strict, practically emotionless, and just a killjoy. But then, around the middle of series 2, he became awesome. He is probably the most dynamic of the characters in the show. Or at least has the most entertaining dynamic.
Several other characters are added as the show progresses, and they’re all enjoyable and well written. But to talk about them would be to give away crucial plot points. Also, many of the characters only show up because some of the old ones die! Yes, there is a LOT of death in this show, and a lot of it is heartbreaking. There’s only 3 or 4 deaths I cheered for, and both of them were amazing. And hilarious.
Nick Cutter’s got some marriage issues going on. His wife, Helen, happens to be the main villain of the series. Out of all the characters in the show, Helen is the most mysterious. She’s one of those characters that nobody will ever understand completely. She’s interesting, but I personally hate her with all my soul. She is one of the most evil, hateable, and manipulative villains I’ve ever seen. I love to hate her, basically. Even when she wasn’t in an episode, her influence is felt. Helen and her plans to do…. whatever it is she tries to do… are confusing because she doesn’t explain them completely. That’s a good thing, though. It adds to the mystery of her character. The audience isn’t supposed to know everything about her.
The characters and story are the best parts of the show. But what separates it from your generic Sci-fi channel crap is the special effects. The computer generation on the creatures looks fantastic for a TV show. I’m not surprised, though. The show was made by the same company that made the Walking With Dinosaurs series, Impossible Pictures. The CG for that show looked great, the CG for its two sequel shows looked even better, and Primeval…. isn’t necessarily better, but it still looks great! In my opinion, the CG in Walking With Monsters is the best that Impossible Pictures has produced.
The creatures are, for the most part, accurate to what the scientific knowledge of certain animals were for the time. Although, there is some creative license with some of them. Most noticeably of which include the horns on the Kaprosuchus and just the overall design of the Dracorex. Other than Dracorex, I wouldn’t say it’s to the point where it’s unbelievable, but I’m sure that people who pay attention to all the details and want everything to be as accurate as possible will find it annoying.
It’s a good thing that the show did more than dinosaurs in the show. They had animals from before the dinosaurs, animals before that, ice age creatures, and even some fictional future specimens. That’s the point that it gets a little… out there. But if you can accept that part, then the show will be a lot easier to enjoy.
Now, I’m going to give a brief review of each series.
Series 1 was the start of the whole thing. It introduced some of the core characters, and took no time in setting up the mysteries surrounding Helen Cutter. What I personally like about British TV shows is how much content they can fit into their episodes and series as a whole, given how few episodes there are in each series. Primeval is no different. A lot of things happen every episode, quickly filling in the pieces to the plot without feeling rushed. The pacing for the first series takes some getting used to if you don’t normally watch British TV, but by the end of episode 6, you will be hooked. Speaking of the end, it shows that time can be tampered with, and the result is not all that good for Nick Cutter.
Series 2 continues the story by showing the consequences of tampering with time, even if it was unintentional. Nick Cutter is trying to adjust to the outcome of the incident for the entirety of the series. His evil b*** of a wife, Helen, isn’t making things any better, and sets one of her plans into motion. This plan results in the saddest death in the whole show, and it’s definitely one of my top 10, if not top 5 saddest character deaths list. Basically, series 2 is better than the first. It’s more intense, easier to invest in the story and characters, and more emotional. It’s great.
As if series 2 wasn’t good enough, we have series 3 to top that. This series is the best out of the 5. Without a doubt. More questions are being answered, but out of those answers only come more questions. There’s more tragic death, more action, more villains, and it all builds up to a fantastic final episode that concludes the main story arc with perfection. Well, almost concludes. If it didn’t end on a cliffhanger with 2 of the main characters, it would have been wrapped up all nice.
Series 4… isn’t anywhere near as good as series 3. You know how Disney’s success in the 90’s peaked with Lion King? And how their downfall came right after that with Pocahontas? It’s the same situation with the transition between series 3 and 4 of Primeval. For one thing, I am glad it didn’t end on that cliffhanger, but looking back, if they wrote it so that the situation with the cliffhanger never happened, it would have been perfect. That didn’t happen, though. I’m not saying that series 4 is bad. I’m saying that it didn’t live up to the perfection of series 3.
Anyway, series 4 continues the story. Well, I should say that it starts a new story arc. This arc is loosely connected to the first one. This time, it deals more with people getting displaced in time, and even more plots to save the future… as well as more plots to destroy the future. Series 4 also introduces many new characters of the team, all of them rather likeable. There’s even another big villain introduced who is sort of connected to Helen Cutter. He’s kind of a villain, but kind of not, too. Yes, there is something off about the guy, but he’s not insane like Helen. Again, the series ends on a cliffhanger. It’s not even that good of a cliffhanger, either. All the previous series, while all connected, each had their individual story arc. There is no distinction between 4 and 5. The two could easily have been combined.
Series 5 (as if it’s not series 4) concludes the show. It’s is a combination of satisfaction and disappointment. Satisfying because we finally find out why the anomalies happen, and the final episode (supposedly) puts an end to them. Also, in episode 5, they finally get a T-Rex! In the middle of London! How awesome is that? Well, not as awesome as it could be. This is where the disappointment comes in. In order to explain my disappointment, I will have to spoil some things, but it won’t ruin the show for you.
Firstly, The T-Rex isn’t there for that long, and a lot of the time they reuse the same shots over and over again. Also, there’s this big anomaly ‘convergence’ thing going on. It’s like the convergence from Thor: The Dark World, except you can see the convergence points, and it’s between time periods, not realms. Anyway, in this convergence is supposed to be a global event. Anomalies aren’t just in the UK anymore. Some are in Japan, America, Africa, everywhere. But sadly, it doesn’t show the destruction and chaos. I was hoping to see the worldwide panic, people getting eaten, mass hysteria! But it’s still centered around a couple, smaller occurrences in the UK… as well as the main big one, sure.
But the worst part of all was how they reused footage from previous episodes! Yes! They took scenes of prehistoric creatures from earlier episodes from earlier series, and put them on TV screens to make it look like a global event! Reusing footage is one thing that pi$$es me off, and it completely kills the fun. Unless you’re playing a drinking game called Take a Shot Every Time You See Stock Footage.
If you want another drinking game, it’s called Take a Shot Every Time They Reuse a CGI Model From a Previous Episode. This time, you’re not drinking to stock footage, but old animation models. While not as low as stock footage, it’s very cheap indeed. You want to know what else makes me want to rip my hair out? That ending. That ending teases you beyond belief. It’s like the show is saying “Oh, you want to know what happens next? You want to know what that was all about? Well, too bad.” That’s just… cheap. Again.
Maybe that’s the problem, now that I think about it. It takes a lot of money to make a new CG model, and even more to animate it. Now that I think about it, it wasn’t exactly the most popular show on the air. Sure, it had its following, but I guess it wasn’t enough to help it go as far as their potential could have. Also, another moment of ‘now that I think about it’, it was mainly in the limitation in the effects department that it felt disappointing. The writing was still good, the characters were still good… and if they tweaked a few things, it would have been a good ending. What would have made it better was if they got creative with their CG limitations, instead of going the annoying route. It wouldn’t have been much, really. Why not have more screen time for the T-Rex? That would’ve been cool. Unfortunately, I can’t change history. Unless I find an anomaly that leads to when the writers were writing the finale, and time obeys their laws of history tampering as seen in series 1 episode 6, then I don’t see it happening.
In the end, Primeval was a great series, but series 3 and 4 could have been better. The characters are awesome, the effects are cool, the story (again, up until series 4) was well written, and it’s very fun to watch. I’d say, if you want a perfect series, stop watching after the end of series 3 and pretend the cliffhanger never happened. But if you do want to see the whole thing, then feel free to do so. I can’t stop you.
Since I can’t technically ignore series 4 and 5 in a review, I’ll have to give this show a…
4 / 5.
But if I DID ignore series 4 and 5, it would get a 5 / 5 for sure. Regardless, I highly recommend this show. Give it a try.
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