Starring: Douglas Hensall, Hannah Spearritt, James Murray, Andrew-Lee Potts, Lucy Brown, Ben Miller and Juliet Aubrey
English TV has always been attracted to maverick scientists battling against what man was not meant to know. From Doomwatch and Quatermass through to Invasion Earth and Eleventh Hour, there’s a long tradition of this sort of story on English TV. It’s not always done well, but the tradition is certainly there.
Primeval, the latest incarnation of this idea, follows Nick Cutter (Henshall), a palaeontologist who along with his lab technician Stephen Hart (Murray) and student Connor Temple (Potts) heads off to investigate reports of a strange animal in the forest of Dean. Cutter’s attracted to the case not only because there seems to be something genuinely odd going on, but because eight years previously, his wife Helen disappeared in the same area. At the same time, zoologist Abby Maitland (Spearritt) is in the area to pick up an unusual lizard from a young boy who found it in the woods. Unknowingly, they all converge on one spot and discover something impossible; dinosaurs, making their way through a hole in time. Clearly out of his depth, Cutter does the only thing he can; he calls the government.
This remarkably sensible approach is one of the many things that raises Primeval above its peers. Cutter and his team are civilians, and the series never fails to remind both us and them that they’re involved in the study of the anomalies under the sufferance of the Home Office. This goes a long way towards deflating the logic problems the series has (After all, how much, exactly, would a palaeontologist know about temporal physics?) and gives it a very grounded, contemporary feel. There’s a great moment in the third episode, for example, where an anomaly opens in a suburban house. The sight of Sergeant Ryan (Mark Wakeling)’s special ops unit in plain clothes and carrying assault weaponry is startling both for how commonplace it now is and the fact that they’re present not to arrest terrorists but investigate prehistoric animals. The running gag throughout the series, that Ryan’s unit never quite get there in time is also both acknowledged and given a very surprising pay off in the finale.
The other area where the series really shines is in its exploration of the anomalies. We learn as the characters learn, each new anomaly leading to both new information and new hazards. This also gives the scriptwriters an excuse to really show off, with episode three, once again, being a stand out. The moment where an anomaly opens in a swimming pool and a Mososaur snatches a high diver out of mid air is pure pulpy joy, as well as a neat indicator of how much danger these anomalies pose. The Pteranodon hunt in episode five is another stand out, as is the Birds-like running battle between our heroes and a flock of Anurognathus as they rampage through a country house. Crucially, this episode also emphasises how out of their depth the characters are, neatly underlining how unprecedented the events they’re investigating are.
The anomalies also give the series an opportunity to explore Cutter’s relationship with his wife (Aubrey). Again, this builds neatly through the series, hints building on hints until we begin to get a good idea of what Helen has been up to in the eight years since she disappeared. Spiky, confident and utterly amoral, Helen is a wonderful character, heroic one moment and self-serving the next and Aubrey brings a real danger to the role. Oddly, her best scenes are with Lucy Brown as Claudia, the team’s home office liaison, their exchange in the final episode crackling with the tension of the best Doctor/Master confrontations from Doctor Who.
But what really makes the series work is the sense of wonder. There’s a scene in episode four where the team have to herd a group of Dodos back through an anomaly that sums this up perfectly. Arriving expecting a herd of sabre-toothed killers, the team and Ryan’s men instead find themselves chasing down a group of endearingly goofy, colossally stupid birds. At one point, Cutter turns to Hart, grinning all over his face and the joy he feels at getting to interact with these animals is palpable.
He’s not the only one either. Connor’s astonishment and pride at what he’s doing feeds into one of the series’ darkest sub plots whilst Claudia’s barely contained panic at what they’re facing pays off in a scene which is both funny and ultimately places her in jeopardy. Even the most stereotypical aspect of the series, Abby’s secret adoption of Rex, a Coelurosauravus, works and like almost every other aspect of the series, places the main characters in tremendous danger.
The uniformly impressive cast are backed up by some extremely tidy plotting, much of which only pays off in the final ten minutes of episode six. It’s a refreshing change for a series like this to have such a strong sense of itself and the actors, Brown and Aubrey in particular, clearly benefit from it.
Inevitably, a show like Primeval will be judged on its effects more than anything else and for the most part, they’re extremely good. Some of the spider sequences in episode two look a little clunky and Cutter’s confrontation with the future predator in episode six is better thought out than it is executed but the other episodes have some jaw dropping moments in them. The Mososaurs in episode three are particularly good but the series highlight must be the savage Gorgonopsid/future predator battle in the final episode.
Primeval, against all expectations, is smart, well thought out and most of all, fun. The cast are good, the scripts avoid almost all the clichés of the genre and the end of the final episode leaves you wanting more. I can’t think of a higher recommendation than that.
Alasdair started writing when he was nine, powered by a hefty diet of '80s cartoons, Doctor Who and Icepops. He's quite tired by this stage but has written a lot of things for a lot of people, including Fortean Times, Neo and Surreal.