Review: Primeval (BBC)

REVIEW - BBC's Primeval (2007-2011)
Created by Tim Haines and Adrian Hodges

PLOT SUMMARY: Primeval follows Professor Nick Cutter and his makeshift team as they try to understand and control shimmering "anomalies" that have begun to pop up all across England, rifts in space and time that give passage to creatures from prehistory. It is up to Professor Cutter and his team--which shifts throughout the 5 seasons, leaving only Abby Maitland and Connor Temple constant--to find and control these "creature incursions," hopefully without injury to the creatures themselves. They are scientists, after all, and would rather study first at the risk of being mauled by mutant future Predators.

At first glance, Primeval might seem to be your run-of-the-mill sci-fi dinosaur show, often compared to things like Stargate, but as the show runs on, it comes into itself more fully, exploring the ever-present push and pull between scientific inquiry and morality. It is most prominent in the last season when the Anomaly Research Centre (or the ARC) has been privatized by Philip Burton and his company, a genius businessman and scientist whose agenda is increasingly more secretive and consequently unsettling. While still giving science the headlining events of each episode--it is a sci-fi show, after all--Series 5 uses the progress that Connor is making as one of Phillip's minions to explore and put tension on the relationship between Connor and Abby, and this is one of the things I loved most about the show. The relationship drama isn't front and center as it would be on most any primetime television show in the States. It is not played up to the degree that every misstep in communication is seemingly the end of the world--rather, the missteps in communication between Connor and Abby have to do with trust and the actual (not figurative) end of the world as they know it. The characters themselves are well developed, and their problems seem in tune with the world they live in, rather than whitewashed to fit whichever world the viewer might hail from.

Of all the characters that come and go (or stay, as the case may be for a select few) through these 5 seasons, Connor Temple is my favorite, and he is the one who grew the most. He starts out as the persistent and excitable grad student, dogging Nick Cutter to take a look at his dinosaur research.

From the one member of the team who is never given a gun--EVER--to the man who saves the world, Connor matures in beautiful ways. His wonderful cockney accent is almost an external indicator of his difference from the rest of the crew, his spirit and sharp edges that somehow allows him easier access to our hearts, despite his unfinished nature.
Connor could have easily been played as the tragic hero who never gets the girl and is constantly underestimated by the other members of his team, but the showrunners smartly decided to forgo the simplistic archetype for a more convoluted one.

While any TV show such as this one runs the risk of falling into a tired Monster-of-the-Week, formulaic rut--Primeval does stumble sometimes--it is well-crafted enough to allow its characters to play with the cookie cutter. It is a witty and innovative addition to the ranks of dinosaur shows and time-travel fiction, a fun foray into a new world that could very well teach us something about our own.