Primeval: Monumentally stupid

Those of you who complained about me focusing so much on the plot holes in my Moon review should stop reading now because this is much of the same. I’m sorry, but I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to review a show as monumentally stupid as Primeval.

The series focuses on a secret government team tasked with investigating mysterious ‘anomalies’, basically big glowing disco balls which act as gateways to different time periods, and protecting the public from the dangerous creatures which often come through them. I could understand this secrecy at the beginning of the show when the government had only just found out about the situation and wanting to stop the public from panicking but not after three and half seasons when they’ve developed methods of both detecting and closing the anomalies. Indeed we have seen many civilians brutally killed just because they were not aware of the danger posed by the creatures. This makes even less sense as in the latest series where, mirroring real life, the Tories have part privatised the top secret operation, giving control of the its scientific arm to Philip Burton, played by Star Trek’s Alexander Siddig, and his company.

The team itself is hilariously incompetent, in the latest series managing to get trapped in a creature infested school by a pair of teenagers. This is not helped by most of the missions being done by just the four of main cast members, one of whom, Connor, is a palaeontology student. A recent episode involved him accepting Doctor Bashir’s, sorry, I mean Philip’s, offer to study the anomalies themselves. I haven’t seen all of the episodes so perhaps somebody could explain to me why, if Connor is so interested in advanced physics, he didn’t choose to study it.

Fans of the show might accuse me of nitpicking. This might be true but even if you ignore all of these factors the show is still average at best, with a horribly confused storyline and mediocre special effects. At least if you concentrate on the plot holes it becomes so bad it’s good, rather than just being boring.