The BEST thing about Primeval: New World is that it shows how brilliant the ORIGINAL Primeval series is. The original is like your favorite childhood desert, so tasty and flavorful. Now, as an adult, you find that while someone has resurrected the brand, it's now just bland and nothing special.
In New World, the main character is Evan Cross, the team LEADER, unlike the original where Conner, the sidekick, is the protagonist. Except for the "pocket change" appearance of Conner in the 1st episode, the surviving original cast are nowhere to be seen, nor are any story lines carried forward. New World is "leader centric" - everything revolves around Evan, so no risk of anything happening to him... Yawn.
The series does pick up (trudging through 8 episodes), and episode 8 does have a nice twist, unlike the original where a number of episodes had "nice" twists. Here, most episodes are "cookie cutter": man-eating creature {fill in the blank name} comes through, causes havoc, and must be returned to its own time. Yawn.
What you don't see is the humor of the original: James Lester is SORELY missed. The Conner/Abby relationship interest is replaced by a triangle (or should that be quadrangle if you don't exclude the dead), but the situations merely serve as pauses between the man-eating dino's (as in CGI is expensive, and we need to have 45 minutes in an episode, so...). Yawn.
Again, where the original had an arc, a sense of direction carried through multiple seasons, a PLAN (I imagine the creators had a notebook with a design of where they wanted to be at the end of each season, for a number of seasons, with directions of how to get there), New World's playbook seems to be "Let's make Season ONE, and we'll worry about subsequent seasons IF we're renewed. It seems that a shorter season (original) IS better than a longer season (New World).
So maybe it'll pick up after the Christmas break. It is worth slogging through the season so far just in case. Consider it an "ironing" program - you know, something that you can watch while you iron, distracting, but not something you have to, nor want to, devote full attention to. (Maybe that's their market: an audience wrapped up in texting, checking e-mail, needing noise as background).
In New World, the main character is Evan Cross, the team LEADER, unlike the original where Conner, the sidekick, is the protagonist. Except for the "pocket change" appearance of Conner in the 1st episode, the surviving original cast are nowhere to be seen, nor are any story lines carried forward. New World is "leader centric" - everything revolves around Evan, so no risk of anything happening to him... Yawn.
The series does pick up (trudging through 8 episodes), and episode 8 does have a nice twist, unlike the original where a number of episodes had "nice" twists. Here, most episodes are "cookie cutter": man-eating creature {fill in the blank name} comes through, causes havoc, and must be returned to its own time. Yawn.
What you don't see is the humor of the original: James Lester is SORELY missed. The Conner/Abby relationship interest is replaced by a triangle (or should that be quadrangle if you don't exclude the dead), but the situations merely serve as pauses between the man-eating dino's (as in CGI is expensive, and we need to have 45 minutes in an episode, so...). Yawn.
Again, where the original had an arc, a sense of direction carried through multiple seasons, a PLAN (I imagine the creators had a notebook with a design of where they wanted to be at the end of each season, for a number of seasons, with directions of how to get there), New World's playbook seems to be "Let's make Season ONE, and we'll worry about subsequent seasons IF we're renewed. It seems that a shorter season (original) IS better than a longer season (New World).
So maybe it'll pick up after the Christmas break. It is worth slogging through the season so far just in case. Consider it an "ironing" program - you know, something that you can watch while you iron, distracting, but not something you have to, nor want to, devote full attention to. (Maybe that's their market: an audience wrapped up in texting, checking e-mail, needing noise as background).