||SPOILERS|| Writer James Moran (Doctor Who/Torchwood) makes his Primeval debut, crafting one of the show's best outings, by essentially treating it like a creepy episode of Torchwood without the incommodious sexual overtones...By far the best decision was to split the story and the team up, which instantly prevented the usual formula of the ARC team arriving in a big group to chase a beast around a different environment. That's hopefully now a thing of the past, considering how many characters they have to service. You can't have a half-dozen people chasing monsters and expect to give them all something relevant to do, so I hope this means Primeval will rotate the monster-hunters and give other characters room to breathe in a decent subplot. It worked well here.
Cutter (Douglas Henshall) and new recruit Sarah (Laila Rouass) are mostly absent, as Jenny (Lucy Brown) leads Connor (Andrew Lee-Potts) and Abby (Hannah Spearitt) to a derelict house the ARC's new-fangled anomaly predictor (a miniature rollercoaster track of metal piping!) says will be the location of another time-hole. It's a proactive mission instead of a reactive one, for once -- but we already know from the teaser (set 16 years earlier) that a group of boys were attacked by a chameleonic critter inside. A tragedy that gave the place its haunted reputation, and the surviving boy the blame for his friend's disappearance.
As I said, this episode felt like a Torchwood idea at heart, which is now possible given Primeval's decision to move away from prehistoric beasts and weave in fictional creatures from "the future" that have been visiting the past through anomalies and forming popular myths. I welcome the new move, with a degree of caution. There was something inherently enjoyable about seeing a beast you knew once existed, CGI'd into contemporary Britain. It's less interesting to see imaginary creatures, as they tend to be poorly-explained and Hollywood knock-offs (this week's critter is essentially Joe Dante's gremlin crossed with Steven Spielberg's Martian from War Of The Worlds.)
A new character was introduced, too: Danny Quinn (Jason Flemyng), a policeman whose younger brother was one of the kids that went missing inside the "haunted house" years ago. He's quite an obstructive presence here, but he already feels like a worthwhile addition to the show, and the way he's introduced was more interesting and relevant than how Dr. Page's debut was handled last week.
Overall, this episode was a little cluttered and I wasn't convinced by Jenny as a leader out in the field, but it ultimately felt much fresher than usual. Primeval's terribly silly, derivative and formulaic most weeks, so it was just nice to watch an episode that actually treated you with a bit of intelligence. The CGI "gremlin" was very good (although it suffered from being ill-explained), there was some effective jump-scares, a pervasive feeling of tension, a few injokes (a spooky child straight from Don't Look Now, a neat Shining reference), and Helen Cutter's (Juliet Aubrey) reappearance actual feels like it has a real purpose for once -- as she's interested in Cutter's anomaly detector.
If every episode was more like this, I'd be much happier.
4 April 2009
ITV1, 7.45pm
Writer: James Moran
Director: Cilla Ware
Cast: Douglas Henshall (Cutter), Andrew-Lee Potts (Connor), Lucy Brown (Claudia), Hannah Spearritt (Abby), Juliet Aubrey (Helen), Ben Miller (Lester), Ben Mansfield (Becker), Laila Rouass (Sarah), Jason Flemyng (Danny Quinn), Tim Faraday (Replica Clone), Glyn Grimstead (Stanley Morgan), Bertie Carvel (Ryan Mason), Joe Prospero (Young Ryan Mason), Jack Bence (Patrick Quinn), Chris Ryman (Jimmy Keal) & Polly Dartford (Emily)
