Primeval : Discussion/Appreciation SPOILER tags required for S4 discussion

[Commander Ivanova]

"Jurassic Park meets the A Team"? Do you agree with the newspapers' assessment of this new sci fi dino show?

IMO it was a bit of a hotchpotch certainly but less like the A Team and more like Torchwood (complete with shots of the team purposefully striding along with the collars of their unusual coat wear turned up) or Doctor Who (especially the scene of monster menace in the school).

Entertaining enough tho' but not sure I care enough to tune in next week, do you?

[Anubis Lives]

I agree with the Torchwood comparison but I found it pretty unique in many places and I was hooked as soon as it started . I found it very enjoyable. I was expecting a Dr Who rip off but was pleasantly surprised. I will definatly be watching next week.

[The Signal]

Stopped watching 20 minutes in, utter drivel IMO, bad acting by the one out of S Club (a transparent attempt to replicate the sucess of Doctor Who by bringing in their own would-be Billie Piper), bad writing, just bad.

[J_B]

Had high hopes when I first saw it being advertised.

Had me laughing after a couple of the dino scenes!

1 it chases the kid back to his house. Comes in through the window, it's snarling, all the racket of the crap being torn to pieces in his room. Then after it leaves the mum shouting to the kid about the noise, lmao!

I turned it off after that, came back down to the tv, a little later then turned it back to 3. This time they were in the school. A dino rampaging through & the teacher not hearing it, until she opened the door.

Then the git (the pretty boy one who wears more make-up than Eddie Izzard or Julian Clary) with the leather coat came in. It corners him, knocks him through the locked door, knocks his ass out with the impact, then runs off & leaves him alone.

Not to mention all that racket & destruction, yet not a single other person in the school to see any of it!

Before that the same guy, said in thw woods they couldn't trust the army to find it, so better those 2 keep looking. Army couldn't find it with their significant manpower. Helicopters with night vision & flir cameras on them. Yet they'll be able to do it.

I actually hoped it'd be more along the lines of 'Supernatural' myself but turns out it's more 'Sesame Street'. 1st ep was a poor man's knock off of 'Jurassic Park'. 2nd one I think is to do with giant spiders. Shouldn't have been too surprised though given the time it aired at. Most likely to be aimed at kids before they go to bed for school.

All in all far little too campy for my taste!

Another thing was that it was supposed to be big budget, yet the sfx was pretty poor to justify that!

[Acolyte Of Bli'l'ab]

To me this was the clincher that England is now incapable of making serious well written cutting edge-sci-fi shows. I thought it was IMHO just as awful, uncreative and badly written as torchwood and new dr who. Certainly wont be watching anymore personally.

[Dumper]

Had high hopes when I first saw it being advertised.

Had me laughing after a couple of the dino scenes!

1 it chases the kid back to his house. Comes in through the window, it's snarling, all the racket of the crap being torn to pieces in his room. Then after it leaves the mum shouting to the kid about the noise, lmao!

I turned it off after that, came back down to the tv, a little later then turned it back to 3. This time they were in the school. A dino rampaging through & the teacher not hearing it, until she opened the door.

Then the git (the pretty boy one who wears more make-up than Eddie Izzard or Julian Clary) with the leather coat came in. It corners him, knocks him through the locked door, knocks his ass out with the impact, then runs off & leaves him alone.

Not to mention all that racket & destruction, yet not a single other person in the school to see any of it!

Before that the same guy, said in thw woods they couldn't trust the army to find it, so better those 2 keep looking. Army couldn't find it with their significant manpower. Helicopters with night vision & flir cameras on them. Yet they'll be able to do it.

I actually hoped it'd be more along the lines of 'Supernatural' myself but turns out it's more 'Sesame Street'. 1st ep was a poor man's knock off of 'Jurassic Park'. 2nd one I think is to do with giant spiders. Shouldn't have been too surprised though given the time it aired at. Most likely to be aimed at kids before they go to bed for school.

All in all far little too campy for my taste!

Another thing was that it was supposed to be big budget, yet the sfx was pretty poor to justify that!

You must of read my mind. Your comments are exactly what i thought of the show, i would of preferred it to be a bit more serious and the scene with the mother having ago at her son, somehow believing he smashed an entire window (with the glass inside his room) was just silly. Unfortunately shows like these fail to understand that the audience don't want to be treated like idiots and would appreciate it if the show had a more mature tone.

[ShadowMaat]

Can't say I'm impressed. It had a definite Torchwood feel to it, IMO, even the music seemed familiar that way. The dinosaurs on their own were very pretty and decently rendered, but they didn't seem to mesh well with their environments.

The characters were appallingly dull and cliched and the acting wasn't very believable. The soldier boy they sent through the Rift tesseract with the Professor needed at least half a dozen more lines. I was half-convinced he was an extra who wasn't allowed to speak, particularly when Professor was all, "I'm just going to wander off on my own now" and the soldier just LOOKED at him. I know things are done differently in England, but I'm pretty sure that ANY soldier of any country would not allow his charge to go wandering off on his own into unknown and very likely hostile territory. The whole point of his being there was to keep the Prof alive.

I also find it a little hard to believe that these "holes" only open up into the far distant past and not at random points throughout history, but I could probably accept it if the storytelling was better.

That being said, I read a book once where government experimenting caused vast patches of the present to swap places with the past and they were in danger of tearing the world apart. I wish I could remember the name of it...

[Cat_the_Alien]

Watched about a half hour, got bored, then hurned it off. Poorly written, poorly acted. The storyline did not engage me and the characters were flat.

As much as I like dinosaurs, I thikk that Primeval is about to go extinct.

[insert groans here.]

[ShadowMaat]

The best character on the show is Rex, and he's CGI. Not a good sign.

[J_B]

The kids obviously like it because it got almost 7m viewers tuning in to it! Although I suspect a large part of that was simply those curious as to what it was because it did get a lot of promotion & also to be fair, the trailers did look interesting. That's why I checked it out myself. I'm off to slap myself for actually thinking the UK could actually make a decent sci-fi or horror show!

Wonder how much that will go down this week?

[Commander Ivanova]

As much as I like dinosaurs, I thikk that Primeval is about to go extinct.

[insert groans here.]

Cat, I was about to green you for having the nerve to post that pun. But I'm fresh out of green jello, sorry!

[Nuallain]

I dunno. It worked and it didn't. It's a charasmatic cast, great FX, a decent concept. But while the first episode had all that horrible premise setting up going on (considering the hype machine was bound to have been hitting the audience over the head with it for months in advance, maybe they should have started with the team already established a single newcomer joining/having it explained to them?), I'm much more troubled by all the little mistakes that make it look like they're just not paying attention.

Things like the kid seeing the dino out the window of his ground floor classroom window only for the assistant to later run away down some stairs. Or characters saying "you always say that" to each other when they just met two scenes previously. And considering this is a show with big time travelling dinos in it, it's a bit odd my suspension of disbelief is strained most by things like mothers who see the side of their house ripped out and then blame their kid for it.

[ShadowMaat]

Primeval is like the LINDA version of Torchwood.

The concept is certainly interesting, but it's being so poorly executed it makes it hard to watch. At least in my opinion.

[Acolyte Of Bli'l'ab]

I'm off to slap myself for actually thinking the UK could actually make a decent sci-fi or horror show!

Rather sad isnt it ? seems like now they have the budgets, they've sacrificed intelligence, originality and good story-telling for little more than hollywood-style style over substance kiddie dreck.

[J_B]

Rather sad isnt it ? seems like now they have the budgets, they've sacrificed intelligence, originality and good story-telling for little more than hollywood-style style over substance kiddie dreck.

Here's the real problem with the show: S1 is to be a 6 parter with a season budget of £6 million pounds.

That's £1mil Sterling per episode = $1.94m US dollars a few measly though from 2mil per show. Stargate only has an average of $1.5 US Dollars per ep, drop of almost half a million dollars. Considering the pretty poor cgi & effects in Primeval among the many other things wrong with it, you honestly couldn't tell that it was so expensive to make. Makes you appreciate some of the fantastic effects seen on Atlantis even more when you see how other shows can waste their budgets. Rainmaker ITV needs you urgently for their new big budget show!

If only I could be allowed to pitch a proper sci-fi show to ITV, get them to give me that sort of budget for 6 eps! I would propose my series 'Project Earth'. Pity it'll never happen though!

Still can't complain at ITV's poor choices, after all they're currently giving us 'Dancing on Ice'! & all those other quality shows

[Darkstar]

Phrases akin to....

Oh My God

and...

I've Wasted an hour of my life....

Come to mind....

If I was crazy enought to watch it lol....

FX look s**t, the blatant Billy Piper rip roaring RIP OFF!! was evident from the very first glace at the TV magazine.

The Thought of a dino/rampage TV show costing so much and delivering so little for the money almost has me angry......then I'm smart enough to remember that ITV pays itself and the TV License pays the Beeb...

My 1st though was Torchwood, I like Doctor Who more so but then Torchwood then This!!!

TV is being killed painfully

[Acolyte Of Bli'l'ab]

Here's the real problem with the show: S1 is to be a 6 parter with a season budget of £6 million pounds.

That's £1mil Sterling per episode = $1.94m US dollars a few measly though from 2mil per show. Stargate only has an average of $1.5 US Dollars per ep, drop of almost half a million dollars. Considering the pretty poor cgi & effects in Primeval among the many other things wrong with it, you honestly couldn't tell that it was so expensive to make. Makes you appreciate some of the fantastic effects seen on Atlantis even more when you see how other shows can waste their budgets. Rainmaker ITV needs you urgently for their new big budget show!

If only I could be allowed to pitch a proper sci-fi show to ITV, get them to give me that sort of budget for 6 eps! I would propose my series 'Project Earth'. Pity it'll never happen though!

If you have ideas for your own show, try and find a way to do it! seriously. I think the only way to put some art back into the art is for it to turn DIY, and as technology is evolving all the time it seems more possible than it did say ten years ago. I admit its alot slower than say music-making where you can do it all on a home PC and not need a pro-studio with every synth and pro-mixer in the world but its certainly getting to the point people are doing some very good amateur stuff. Usually what makes the amateur films suck is the bad-acting, but at least for the FX its good enough for TV values (see damnatus the warhammer 40k film for example)

[neurophobic_and_perfect]

I can sum it up in one word - awful.

It was a total let down: really unrealistic and not at all believable.

[The Ori]

They are trying to make it all American.

I live in England, and have to admit, English programes are WHACKAGE!

The Americans ones are good, and by looking at Primeval, you could they were trying it!!

[Promethius30]

Rubbish i like most shows and this is rubbish and i am not watching it again i could not see one good thing with this show