The first episode of Primeval went to air in New Zealand last night and I'm afraid I'm joining the "disappointed" team. I was looking forward to this as a fan of British TV but it quickly lost my vote, and not just because it looks like a cross between Jurassic Park and Stargate. That wouldn't have been a problem if the writers and director had shown any degree of patience with their plot. Instead, they rushed headlong into the story as if in fear of the viewers getting away if they stopped for breath. So there was no tension, no build-up, no clever mind games with the viewer and, by the end of the first fifteen minutes, we already knew far too much - as did the characters. And what the characters discovered didn't scare them anywhere near enough. The main ones are supposed to be serious scientists but they were far too ready to accept things that should have thrown their world-view into chaos. Big, scary creature? Well, clearly it's a dinosaur that's somehow found its way into the present day. Oh, look - big sparkly thing in the forest. It must be a space-time anomaly. We've all heard about those! And yes, let's go through the big sparkly thing despite the fact that we have absolutely no idea what it will do to us or what, if anything, is on the other side. (At least Stargate had the nous to send a mechanical probe through first). And the scenes with the boy were just plain lazy and crude. A dinosaur manages to track the boy right back to his bedroom in suburban England and then proceeds to smash its way through his window and wreck his room without anyone in the other houses noticing. And when his mother comes up to tell the boy off for making so much noise, she doesn't even bother to ask how the bedroom window frame came to be smashed to pieces! Pu-lease! Yes, I know that sci-fi demands a suspension of disbelief but good sci-fi doesn't insult your intelligence along the way. What it should do is challenge your imagination. Primeval doesn't do that - at least not for the adult viewer - so I won't be tuning in next week.
