A nameless critic, not far from these pages, believed they'd need to suffer brain damage before they could watch Primeval, so I thought I'd stump up five reasons why you don't need to stick your head in a shredder to enjoy it:
1. A body of England's, breathing English air.
If you're British, then the options for home grown action-adventure were limited to Doctor Who and Spooks before Primeval came along. So it's nice to have another drama rooted in our own culture that isn't pants. I appreciate this is a worthless argument for the international audience, but it is important for the home crowd, .
2. It's all round family entertainment.
I remember aged nine being bored by a Doctor Who. In the absence of the Daleks, I interrupted my parents viewing by noisily playing with my toys. I don't have kids, but I don't see Primeval falling into that trap: the monsters are never off screen long enough for an ADHD tot to throw a tantrum.
In fact, there's something in it for everyone (except the moody teenager). There's Mills & Boon romance for the mums. There's Hannah Spearitt dancing in her underwear for Dad. There's slapstick and yuck jokes for the kids, and more sophisticated one-liners for the adults. Of course, accommodating everyone means its necessarily drawn with a broad brush – but if it doesn't get the big audiences, then it won't get the big budgets and the show wouldn't be viable. This is TV for the X-Factor audience; I'm just surprised we don't get to vote off ARC members. So don't be the kid who refuses to eat the Christmas cake coz it's got cherries in it. Suck it up, and enjoy.
3. Connor & Abby
Take this moment from S4E1, where Connor and Abby are in a car being chased by a Spinosaurus.
JESS (over the radio): Maintain direction for 300 yards. Take the second turn on the right.
CONNOR (to Abby): Second turn on yer-
ABBY: I'm not deaf Connor.
CONNOR: Sorry.
ABBY: But thanks.
Spearritt delivers her line with enough sarcasm to make it funny on its own (think Indiana Jones vs Marion Ravenwood). It's also a sly dig at those shows where a private ignores an order from his boss's boss until his immediate superior has repeated it - even when all three are in the same room. And Abby's touching "thanks", reveals genuine affection – the kind of understated expression of repressed emotion that could have come from the pen of Alan Bennett (for Brits an expression of affection is a cessation of hostilities, and if that's too subtle for you then see point 0).
Admittedly Connor started out as the kid brother the Chuckle Brothers disowned – but any critic sharing nationhood with Adam Sandler has no legs to stand on here, and my Mum works in a school and the kids do love it (so see point 2). Andrew-Lee Potts is brilliant at it, too. That said, the character has grown: he's progressed from total incompetency to mild incompetency; and any day now he's going to step up to "only occasionally" incompetent. Let hope he doesn't do a Greg Sanders and become terminally dull as a result, because his ineptitude is closer to humanity's norm than the flawless action hero. The dumb things he says--just before the segment quoted above he chastises Abby for driving to close the kerbs--are the dumb things we all say. And his cheeky grin is to die for.
4. The writers have done their research.
As you'd expect from the team behind Walking With Dinosaurs, every dino that turns up is real (and sometimes the writers can't resist giving the accompanying lessen in paleobiology). But the anomalies are on firm ground too; ridiculously large magnetic fields are one of the ways time travel might be achievable. (You've seen Carl Sagan's Contact, haven't you?) They may not call them such: but Primeval's anomalies are wormholes with event horizons, and they're more plausible than anything in Stargate or Doctor "whadayamean-a-ship-that-can-cope-with-rentry-can't-cope-with-a-little-storm-and-dont-get-me-started-on-sharks-that-live-in-the-air" Who; in fact it might well be the hardest SF on telly at the moment.
5. The monsters.
Okay, this is the biggy. I can't think of a single American show with so many effects shots. And those of us who grew up watching bubblewrap painted green know how lucky we are to see dinos bounding round a mall – even if the polygons can be counted when the monsters stay in view for more than a second. On top of that, the "batosaur" is the most original monster I've seen in years; genuinely iconic.
Frankly I might have to admit defeat and say Primeval is brain damaged. It doesn't matter, I'd check my brain at the door and just watch the monsters. If Primeval get's canned, there'll be nothing on telly that can replace it. CSI: Cretaceous? Purlease. The 'raptors would eat Grissom for breakfast.