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phantym_56People - whoever you are, wherever you came from, stop. Please give me five minutes of your time so I can show you what Primeval is all about and why you should watch it.
It deserves so much more love than it gets. People see that it's an ITV series and immediately assume it's rubbish, or they assume it's a rip-off of Doctor Who, and neither is true. Let me show you what Primeval is about.
This is not a minute-by-minute examination of the series. I don't want to give away too much but here is a very basic outline of the first episode, the characters, some of the relationships and a few dinosaurs.
The reason I'm doing this is that series two starts next Saturday and I want every single one of you to at least watch the first new episode, please. Just one hour of your Saturday. ITV are also repeating the last episode of series one earlier in the afternoon, so you can catch up a bit. My local library which doesn't have a terribly good DVD selection has it, so the chances are yours will too.
Please. This show deserves so much love. Tell your friends about it; even if you don't like it, maybe one of them will.
It deserves so much more love than it gets. People see that it's an ITV series and immediately assume it's rubbish, or they assume it's a rip-off of Doctor Who, and neither is true. Let me show you what Primeval is about.
This is not a minute-by-minute examination of the series. I don't want to give away too much but here is a very basic outline of the first episode, the characters, some of the relationships and a few dinosaurs.
We start with a dinosaur in a supermarket car park, chasing a woman.
And then we cut to:
Please notice the fact that this is a Toyota Hilux, because if you were a dinosaur hunter, what better car to drive than one that is utterly indestructible.
Cutter (Douglas Henshall)
Our hero is Professor Nick Cutter, an evolutionary zoologist who's interested in the pieces that Darwin didn't explain.
Stephen (James Murray)
Stephen Hart is Cutter's "laboratory technician", best friendand lover. He's your all-star action hero, who can track wounded animals through the rainforest for weeks on end, do all your outdoor pursuits things, better with a gun than the SAS, etc.
Claudia (Lucy Brown)
Claudia Brown works for the Home Office, she's the government girl sent to keep an eye on the team. She's on their side in general, but when pushed, really has to side with the government. She and Cutter get quite close over the series.
Connor (Andrew-Lee Potts)
Actually, Connor is the first character to get to speak in Primeval. He's a geek, quite simply, and yes, his lines are over-cluttered with references to Buffy and Star Trek and comic books etc, but he's very sweet. He has an unrequited crush on Abby and an encyclopaedic knowledge/obsession with prehistoric creatures.
Abby (Hannah Spearritt)
You may remember Hannah from S Club 7 back in the nineties. However, if you do, you probably remember Billie Piper back when she was a blonde teenage popstar and how she surprised you on Doctor Who. Do not write Hannah off as a blonde teenage popstar.
Abby is a great character. She's a zookeeper who specialises in lizards and has practical experience with living creatures that the others don't. She also has a habit of wandering around her flat in just her pants, but the writers promise there'll be no more of that in series two.
These are the main characters but there are two more, equally important.
Helen (Juliet Aubrey)
One is Helen Cutter, Nick's wife. She is the woman from the supermarket right back at the beginning and she disappeared at that time, eight years before the series begins. She's believed dead until Nick starts seeing her randomly, and then Stephen:
I'm not going to elaborate on Helen but suffice it to say that 1) she is a ruthless manipulative bitch 2) she is not dead.
James Lester (Ben Miller)
Lester is the man in charge, a "government hacket man", Claudia's immediate superior. He is made of snark, he dislikes dinosaurs and he loathes Cutter.
Actually, there's another one, who isn't included in the opening credits but is just as important as the rest.
Ryan (Mark Wakeling)
Captain Tom Ryan is from the SAS and is appointed by Claudia as the team's personal bodyguard.
Now you've met all the main characters, so it's time to explain the story. If you must compare it to any BBC series, say Torchwood rather than Doctor Who. The series works around a series of rips in space and time, sparkly windows called anomalies and through these come creatures from all eras of the Earth's past and occasionally, the future. This is where Helen has been hiding out. This is what an anomaly looks like:
It is also like Torchwood in that it has a pet flying dinosaur, but Primeval's Coelurosauravus is featured a lot more than Torchwood's pteradactyl. His name is Rex and he's a flying lizard, small enough to be cuddled and behaves more like a cat than a lizard. Abby found him in the first episode and he lives with her and Connor.
Generally, the story features a creature coming through an anomaly. The team then have to get everything back to its own time, stop them from causing too much destruction and while they're at it, try to study the anomalies. Helen clearly has a way to control them, or at least to predict them and Nick, by the end of the series, is getting there too. The rest of us are clueless.
Obviously, the big thing of the series is the dinosaurs because what series isn't improved by the presence of random dinosaurs?
This one is from the first series, it's a Gorgonopsid, which is a vicious killer and able to track by following the scent of blood, which is how its ended up in this kid's bedroom (he scratched his hand on a bramble) I was a little doubtful about this series when I saw a trailer which seemed to feature people fighting off dinosaurs using lightsabers, but it's only this kid, who throws everything in his room at the monster and therefore, it's brilliant. When he finally scares it off, it follows him to school.
Another random dinosaur is a Hesperornis, from e3, which is like a lizard-bird thing with a long neck. It attacks a random Welsh plumber in the middle of London. You get used to random Welsh accents all over the place in Doctor Who and Torchwood but hearing one here took me by surprise a bit the first time.
Everything is kicked off in the first episode by this
Connor spots this in the paper and sees that it's quite close by. He takes it to his university professor, Nick, who is only interested once he realises that this is happening just where his wife went missing eight years ago. It's not a hoax, there really are dinosaurs coming through from the past and we're away.
Nick and Ryan go through to the past which looks like this:
and make some discoveries - an abandoned military camp, a camera with Helen's initials on it and a significant skeleton. The significance does not become clear until the last episode.
Finally, no series overview would be complete without a mention of the relationships, and for tangled relationships, Primeval is right up there with Robin Hood.
The one the show is pushing is Nick/Claudia.
They get no fewer than three kisses in the first series, including one the very first time they meet.
There's also Connor/Abby in which Connor is in love with Abby, but she doesn't love him back.
You see, Abby is in love with Stephen and being a girl, she takes every opportunity to grab him. While this does take away from her being a strong independent female, I have to admit that this is exactly what my friends and I have always done...
Stephen/Cutter is another, probably one the writers haven't considered, and probably the most popular of all the Primeval ships.
Or, you know, take your pick from any combination of any characters, they pretty much all work.
Here are a few others, mostly the team doing stuff.
And then we cut to:
Please notice the fact that this is a Toyota Hilux, because if you were a dinosaur hunter, what better car to drive than one that is utterly indestructible.
Cutter (Douglas Henshall)
Our hero is Professor Nick Cutter, an evolutionary zoologist who's interested in the pieces that Darwin didn't explain.
Stephen (James Murray)
Stephen Hart is Cutter's "laboratory technician", best friend
Claudia (Lucy Brown)
Claudia Brown works for the Home Office, she's the government girl sent to keep an eye on the team. She's on their side in general, but when pushed, really has to side with the government. She and Cutter get quite close over the series.
Connor (Andrew-Lee Potts)
Actually, Connor is the first character to get to speak in Primeval. He's a geek, quite simply, and yes, his lines are over-cluttered with references to Buffy and Star Trek and comic books etc, but he's very sweet. He has an unrequited crush on Abby and an encyclopaedic knowledge/obsession with prehistoric creatures.
Abby (Hannah Spearritt)
You may remember Hannah from S Club 7 back in the nineties. However, if you do, you probably remember Billie Piper back when she was a blonde teenage popstar and how she surprised you on Doctor Who. Do not write Hannah off as a blonde teenage popstar.
Abby is a great character. She's a zookeeper who specialises in lizards and has practical experience with living creatures that the others don't. She also has a habit of wandering around her flat in just her pants, but the writers promise there'll be no more of that in series two.
These are the main characters but there are two more, equally important.
Helen (Juliet Aubrey)
One is Helen Cutter, Nick's wife. She is the woman from the supermarket right back at the beginning and she disappeared at that time, eight years before the series begins. She's believed dead until Nick starts seeing her randomly, and then Stephen:
I'm not going to elaborate on Helen but suffice it to say that 1) she is a ruthless manipulative bitch 2) she is not dead.
James Lester (Ben Miller)
Lester is the man in charge, a "government hacket man", Claudia's immediate superior. He is made of snark, he dislikes dinosaurs and he loathes Cutter.
Actually, there's another one, who isn't included in the opening credits but is just as important as the rest.
Ryan (Mark Wakeling)
Captain Tom Ryan is from the SAS and is appointed by Claudia as the team's personal bodyguard.
Now you've met all the main characters, so it's time to explain the story. If you must compare it to any BBC series, say Torchwood rather than Doctor Who. The series works around a series of rips in space and time, sparkly windows called anomalies and through these come creatures from all eras of the Earth's past and occasionally, the future. This is where Helen has been hiding out. This is what an anomaly looks like:
It is also like Torchwood in that it has a pet flying dinosaur, but Primeval's Coelurosauravus is featured a lot more than Torchwood's pteradactyl. His name is Rex and he's a flying lizard, small enough to be cuddled and behaves more like a cat than a lizard. Abby found him in the first episode and he lives with her and Connor.
Generally, the story features a creature coming through an anomaly. The team then have to get everything back to its own time, stop them from causing too much destruction and while they're at it, try to study the anomalies. Helen clearly has a way to control them, or at least to predict them and Nick, by the end of the series, is getting there too. The rest of us are clueless.
Obviously, the big thing of the series is the dinosaurs because what series isn't improved by the presence of random dinosaurs?
This one is from the first series, it's a Gorgonopsid, which is a vicious killer and able to track by following the scent of blood, which is how its ended up in this kid's bedroom (he scratched his hand on a bramble) I was a little doubtful about this series when I saw a trailer which seemed to feature people fighting off dinosaurs using lightsabers, but it's only this kid, who throws everything in his room at the monster and therefore, it's brilliant. When he finally scares it off, it follows him to school.
Another random dinosaur is a Hesperornis, from e3, which is like a lizard-bird thing with a long neck. It attacks a random Welsh plumber in the middle of London. You get used to random Welsh accents all over the place in Doctor Who and Torchwood but hearing one here took me by surprise a bit the first time.
Everything is kicked off in the first episode by this
Connor spots this in the paper and sees that it's quite close by. He takes it to his university professor, Nick, who is only interested once he realises that this is happening just where his wife went missing eight years ago. It's not a hoax, there really are dinosaurs coming through from the past and we're away.
Nick and Ryan go through to the past which looks like this:
and make some discoveries - an abandoned military camp, a camera with Helen's initials on it and a significant skeleton. The significance does not become clear until the last episode.
Finally, no series overview would be complete without a mention of the relationships, and for tangled relationships, Primeval is right up there with Robin Hood.
The one the show is pushing is Nick/Claudia.
They get no fewer than three kisses in the first series, including one the very first time they meet.
There's also Connor/Abby in which Connor is in love with Abby, but she doesn't love him back.
You see, Abby is in love with Stephen and being a girl, she takes every opportunity to grab him. While this does take away from her being a strong independent female, I have to admit that this is exactly what my friends and I have always done...
Stephen/Cutter is another, probably one the writers haven't considered, and probably the most popular of all the Primeval ships.
Or, you know, take your pick from any combination of any characters, they pretty much all work.
Here are a few others, mostly the team doing stuff.
The reason I'm doing this is that series two starts next Saturday and I want every single one of you to at least watch the first new episode, please. Just one hour of your Saturday. ITV are also repeating the last episode of series one earlier in the afternoon, so you can catch up a bit. My local library which doesn't have a terribly good DVD selection has it, so the chances are yours will too.
Please. This show deserves so much love. Tell your friends about it; even if you don't like it, maybe one of them will.
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no subject
Date: 2008-01-07 03:59 pm (UTC)yay! It's back!
no subject
Date: 2008-01-07 09:59 pm (UTC)quite excited about the next couple of weeks - first Primeval, then Torchwood!