Primeval - BBC America - A Review

Primeval - Review
BBC America
© Buzzy Multimeida

One of the best deals to come with a good cable package is BBC America. It features the best of the best of British specials, dramas, and comedies. So when I first saw the commercials for Primeval, the latest series from across the pond, I was a bit skeptical. Not only is it another sci-fi show that deals with time travel - Doctor Who, Life On Mars - but features loads of CGI dinosaurs. The commercial spots of beasts roaming around the English countryside looked especially cheap, almost to Sci Fi Channel original movie proportions. Once I sat down and watched the first three episodes, I found that Primeval thankfully offers more than SS Doomtroopers (seriously, Google it!).

Nine years before the show starts, Professor Nicholas Cutter’s wife, also a scientist, disappeared while investigating reports of an unidentified species of predator terrorizing a local supermarket. Cutter who is an evolutionary scientist and his team of skeptical, but ambitious, wannabe scientists learn that prehistoric animals are somehow traveling through rips in the time-space continuum, called “anomalies,” and running around in the present day U.K. Soon the government - the super sketchy possibly evil type - recruits Cutter and his team to track down, capture, and return these creatures to their own time while covering up the evidence so as not to alarm the public.

What makes Primeval fun and keeps it interesting is that the Primeval universe is not set in our reality, but in a parallel universe. Not only does this help make the anomalies and the theory of alternate realities slightly more credible, it also makes for great plot twists. Helen, Cutter’s supposed dead wife, eventually reappears after spending years traveling through anomalies. She ends up being the principle villain pitted against Nick and his pursuit of preserving the natural time-line. This allows the writers and show creators, Adrian Hodges and Tim Haines, to construct elaborate in-universes based on actual paleontology and evolutionary science. For example, some anomalies open to the future. The future creatures that appear are based on real scientific hypotheses about the evolution of life hundreds of years in Earth’s future. Did you know that 75% of mammals on Earth are either bats or rats? Scientists believe that the next generation of top predators will probably come from these species and could incorporate sonar for deadly efficient hunting. This is the theory behind the deadly species just called “Future Hunters” that appear later in the series.

Did I mention that the future creatures are also terrifying? The CGI effects in the actual episodes are quite good in quality, especially for a weekly 40 minute television show. The creatures are certainly visceral and well-designed but the icing on the cake is that they are based in part on real scientific evidence. Creators Haines and Hodges’ most well known project are the CGI based Walking With …documentaries for the Discovery Channel and as a result they attempt to depict smilodons (saber-tooth tigers), raptors, and gorgonopsia (prehistoric wolves) as accurately as possible.

Overall, the stories are equal parts action-packed and geeky, the characters are likeable if a little stereotypical, and the afore mentioned mascot Rex - a small green Permian reptile known as Coelurosauravus that existed 250 million years ago - is indeed cute. Primeval airs Saturday nights at 7:00 pm ET on BBC America.

by Jamie Metrick

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Jamie Metrick

Buzzy Mag Reviewer

Latest posts by Jamie Metrick (see all)

• Primeval - BBC America - A Review - 11/20/2008