Primeval (2007-2011)
TV Series Review
“What Jurassic World should have been.”
Reviewed by Dr. DJ Hadoken 7 the Fake Paleontologist
After posting my review (master’s thesis) about the crapterpiece “Jurassic World Dominion”, I felt like I needed to write this review in order to get rid of the bad aftertaste.
“Primeval” is a British TV show that aired from the late “noughties” (that’s British English for the 2000’s) to early 2010’s. I only just discovered it recently. I found it on Amazon Prime and just started watching it randomly.
I thought it was going to be stupid when I started watching it, but it’s actually pretty entertaining.
It’s like what the “Jurassic World” movies should have been. I think that this is what most people are actually looking for when they watch “Jurassic World”. Dinosaurs running amok in modern day society.
Of all things to make a British TV show about, I wonder why the creators decided to go all-in on a show about dinosaurs. They try really hard to make each episode as entertaining as possible. In one episode, one of the characters makes a comment, “That’s the saddest thing I’ve seen since Matrix Revolutions.” What a zinger.
The series was on air for five seasons before ending in 2011. Which is four years before the first “Jurassic World” movie came out in 2015. And if you count “Primeval: New World”, which aired from 2012 to 2013, you can say that the show ran for six seasons. The difference is that the original “Primeval” takes place in England and “Primeval: New World” takes place in Canada.
So it’s sad to know that even though they had essentially six seasons of reference material from the “Primeval” franchise, the creators of “Jurassic World” still managed to screw up.
Unlike “Jurassic World” (where the only character that matters is Chris Pratt), the characters in “Primeval” are memorable. They have an entertaining dynamic with each other and, most importantly, they don’t steal the show from the dinosaurs.
Each episode puts the spotlight on a different dinosaur. An episode always begins with a scene that involves the featured dinosaur, usually just after it has crossed over via an “anomaly”. The episode then goes on to explore how that particular dinosaur would behave when thrust into the modern world and how humans would react to it. And usually ends with the dinosaur being returned to whence it came.
It’s a very simple, but magical formula for entertainment. And I am truly impressed that they never diverge from the formula. From the very first episode, up into the “Primeval: New World” show, the episodes are all structured the same way. The creators knew what works and stuck with it to the very end.
I feel that the average person (not dinosaur-genre enthusiast) who hears “live action dinosaur show / movie” will usually think of “Jurassic Park” or “Jurassic World”. For the average person, that’s the “pinnacle” of dinosaur entertainment. They may likely dismiss anything else as a low quality “knock-off” before even giving it a chance.
I was like that, too. Unless it’s like “Godzilla” or something else marketed as a “lizard monster” movie and not a “dinosaur” movie, I had no interest. I just automatically and naïvely assumed that if it’s not “Jurassic Park” related, it’s not worth watching.
So that’s why when I clicked on the first episode of “Primeval: New World”, I had extremely low expectations. Yes, actually, I started with the second show, because I didn’t realize until afterwards that there was another show that preceded it.
It only took about 10 minutes or so, though, to get me hooked and subsequently binge watch all five seasons of “Primeval”. As I watched the first episode, the sequence of my thoughts went something like this:
1. The production value of the dinosaurs isn’t so bad...
2. The acting for the human characters isn’t so bad, either...
3. The story is centered around dinosaurs and humans interacting in modern day society, and it’s entertaining...
4. I want to see more of these dinosaurs and human characters interacting in modern day society...
5. Wait a minute... this is what I wanted from “Jurassic World” all along..!
2. The acting for the human characters isn’t so bad, either...
3. The story is centered around dinosaurs and humans interacting in modern day society, and it’s entertaining...
4. I want to see more of these dinosaurs and human characters interacting in modern day society...
5. Wait a minute... this is what I wanted from “Jurassic World” all along..!
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I think that a modern-day big budget movie structured like an extended episode of “Primeval” would be very entertaining. Each episode of “Primeval” is about 45 minutes, so maybe about twice that length. There are already a few “two-part” episodes in the series, so reference material exists for that, too.
“Primeval” is a traditional “episodic” TV show. As I mentioned already, each episode is structured the same way and adheres to a “magic formula”. Which means that the viewer can be more or less entertained by a single episode without having to know much of the backstory. But there’s enough depth in each episode that viewers are enticed to come back and enjoy the bigger narrative.
Dinosaurs are a niche genre, so it’s anybody’s guess as to how “successful” it would actually be. But
I believe that if a big budget “Primeval” movie came out and was indeed “successful”, it might be able to steal the spotlight from “Jurassic World”. Because it essentially is what the average person visualizes in their mind when they hear a phrase like “jurassic world movie / show”.
So if that happened, I think we’d witness this kind of depressing (in regard to human nature) phenomenon where average people start to confuse a “Primeval” movie for being a “Jurassic World” movie and then not watching an actual “Jurassic World” movie because they are already getting what they want from the “Primeval” movie.
So there you go. I roasted “Jurassic World Dominion”, but there’s not much to roast about “Primeval”. Except for maybe some aspects of the last two seasons. But I won’t go into it here to avoid spoilers. Go watch it for yourself and you’ll see what I mean.
Just for the record, I believe that Nick Cutter (played by Douglas Henshall), Connor Temple (played by Andrew-Lee Potts), Abby Maitland (played by Hannah Spearritt), and James Lester (played by Ben Miller) from “Primeval” are all more entertaining protagonists than most of the protagonists in the “Jurassic Park” or “Jurassic World” movies, with the exception of the main protagonists from the first “Jurassic Park” movie. I would have rather seen a crossover of the “Primeval” protagonists and the first “Jurassic Park” movie’s protagonists than the crapterpiece we got with Chris Pratt in “Jurassic World Dominion”.
Oh yeah, I can confirm that Spinosaurus makes an appearance in “Primeval”. I don’t recall any jokes from the show that were specifically about Spinosaurus, however. But there’s plenty of other dinosaur inspired humor. So if you’re an all-around dinosaur humor connoisseur, then maybe this show is for you.
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