I was never that into dinosaurs. Sure, I watched Jurassic Park along with everyone else, but, like David Foster Wallace once wrote, the story loses its plot after awhile, and by the fifth viewing you are really goddamn rooting for those velociraptors. A similar observation can be made of the BBC series Primeval, which was created by the people who brought you the “Walking with the…” series, and uses something called “anomalies” to bring prehistoric creatures into our world, and to wreak all kinds of improper havoc in the city of London. It’s the job of a rag-tag team of scientists from the ARC (Anomaly Research Center) to locate the portals, and corral any stray dodo birds or mammoths back to their homes. But, their appearances seem so unrelenting, as if the world wants them so badly to happen, it comes off as ridiculous of them to try so hard to stop it.
The ARC team’s big argument against the villain of the show, who wants to put the screws in their work, is that she is trying to mess with time, yet the show never quite figures out what the sides are, or the objectives. In the premiere episode, a crocodile creature springs out of a museum's Egyptian artifact that really turned out to be an anomaly that clever ancient Egyptians figured out how to contain (they really figured out everything before us). Museum worker Sarah reasons that creatures like this must have been the source of their myths, and so head anomaly-chaser Nick Cutter (Douglas Henshall) hires her to trace back every myth ever to find out if they could have been caused by displaced creatures. By the second episode, she succeeds (ahem), confirming that anomalies have been occurring for centuries, and gives them the ability to track the next ones, causing a "Let's move!" momentum to the season. Meanwhile, it makes me think "Don't touch."
Speaking of fragile, the way time works in this show is shaky to say the least. The timeline we’re watching is not even the one the series started in, as there used to be a love interest for Cutter named Claudia Brown, who now has never existed. Since he jumped into an anomaly and came back out again at the end of the first season, Claudia’s been erased, with a doppelganger, Jenny Lewis in her place. Jenny Lewis’ situation as a girl-out-of-time who had no idea she’s out of time is unique, and a good way to make the effect of possible timeline changes due to anomalies personal for the audience and the characters, but it also comes off as a huge cop out. Why a change in the past would lead to a woman’s personality and name being different is beyond comprehension. Perhaps the show was planning to answer it in time, but the BBC canceled the series, and in the fifth episode, Jenny inexplicably decides to leave the ARC to forget about everything and get some me-time.
From that point on, with the logic behind anomalies making less sense with each episode, and half of the main cast dispensed with, it’s pretty much a free-for-all. Younger team members Connor (Andrew-Lee Potts) and Abby (Hannah Spearritt, from S Club 7!) experience an interesting growth with the departure of their mentors, which keeps the show grounded, but by the end, the big villain comes to an unceremonious demise, the series closes on a pointless non-cliffhanger, and the pros and cons of anomaly-chasing never un-murk. At least the effects and action scenes were consistently impressive. Even as a non-dinosaur fan I was jumping up and down just a little as the show-invented Gigantosaurus terrorized Heathrow. Go, G-Rex, go!
DVD Bonus Features
The commentaries are nice to listen to if you are a real anglophile and can’t get enough of that accent. Everyone’s very cheery while discussing the inaccurate exclusion of anuses on the dinosaurs. “Cutter’s Odyssey” serves as a handy recap from Douglas Henshall on his character’s arc, for those who didn’t watch the first two seasons, and “Genesis of a Creature” not only takes us through the digital animation process from the design up, but from a 16-year-old contest winner’s design. The kid wears a backpack as he walks around the set, and shows the cast his ridiculously impressive drawings, and in particular makes Spearritt’s cute little eyes bug out. “Shut up, that was an hour and a half’s work?! It would’ve taken me an hour and a half to draw the eye.” Uh, when are those S Club 7 DVDs coming out again?
"Primeval: Volume 2" is on sale September 15, 2009 and is rated NR. Action, Adventure. Directed by Tony Mitchell. Written by Tim Haines, Adrian Hodges. Starring Andrew Lee Potts, Douglas Henshall, Hannah Spearritt, Jason Flemyng, Lucy Brown.
