WRITER: Adrian Hodges DIRECTOR: Cilla Ware
CAST: Douglas Henshall (Prof Nick Cutter), Hannah Spearritt (Abby Maitland), James Murray (Stephen Hart), Andrew-Lee Potts (Connor Temple), Juliet Aubrey (Helen Cutter), Lucy Brown (Claudia Brown), Ben Miller (James Lester), Mark Wakeling (Capt Tom Ryan), Abigail Aston (Diane Johnson), Andrew French (Detective Inspector), Pascale Burgess (Jane Dexter), James Bradshaw (Duncan) & Aled Pugh (Plumber)
After a lifeguard is eaten by a prehistoric crocodile, Cutter and his team are forced to brave icy waters to find the anomaly...Primeval at least doesn't have a pretentious bone in its body. ITV's monster adventure is old-fashioned and vacuous entertainment, but it's also entertaining and knowingly daft. Episode 3 is the best yet, mainly because it refuses to rest on its laurels and actually develops the storyline.
Unlike last week's extended underground spider infestation, this week's threat (a Mosasaur) is more evenly spread over the 45-minutes. The crocodile-like threat moves from a public swimming pool to a local boating lake swiftly, before the anomaly itself is explored underwater and the ongoing mystery behind Cutter's missing wife is prematurely explained.
The characters remain sketchy at best; particularly Rob Lowe look-alike Stephen (James Murray), boring civil servant Lucy (Claudia Brown) and Ben Miller's clichéd straight-talking boss Lester.
Douglas Henshall's stoic Professor Cutter is no fun, a character that should be charismatic and passionate, but instead is a humourless bore who can't even conjure up believable emotions when faced with his long-lost wife.
Beyond all expectations, Hannah Spearritt is doing a perfectly good job as the impish Abby Maitland. Likewise, Andrew-Lee Potts is acceptable as resident geek Connor. Both actors are involved in a love triangle: Abby has unrequited feelings for Stephen, while Connor has unrequited feelings for Abby. It's a little soapy for my taste, but adequate filler between all the CGI.
The special effects are sublime. The 70 million year old Mosasaur is a great creature, perfectly realized in all the underwater sequences and whenever the giant lizard surfaces the effects remain pretty special. In particular, a tussle between the Mosasaur and Connor is great fun.
Episode 3 thankfully subverts expectations for another laborious man-versus-monster storyline, with a nice trip into the past for Cutter. Thrown back to the Cretaceous period, Cutter finds his wife Helen, who has been living in Earth's distant past for the past eight years.
It's surprisingly to see this mystery returned to and solved so early in the show's run. I was frustrated to find no twist was involved -– so, what, Helen just enjoyed nipping back to our time and enigmatically standing around like a ghost? Ridiculous.
The performances by Henshall and screen wife Juliet Aubrey are also maddeningly underplayed and left me emotionally cold. And that's the problem with Primeval: great visuals, fun idea, but no emotional investment in anything. The stars of the show are the wonderful creature effects, while the actors are stuck with two-dimensional roles.
There were a few signs writer Adrian Hodges has the talent to create something more interesting in the show's investigations (the water temperature/steam), while the storyline developed and progressed much better than usual.
For those reasons and the unpredicted leap in the Helen Cutter plot (no matter how silly), Episode 3 is the best of an underwhelming bunch.
