TV: Primeval - Season 2, Episode 1

ITV's answer to Doctor Who is back for a second series, this time with 7 episodes -- conveniently bumping the total number to an international-sales-friendly 13. Not usually a good sign for longevity. But regardless -- Primeval is Torchwood crossed with Jurassic Park for a family audience, essentially, as a team of semi-qualified pretty people chase dinosaurs (and other prehistoric beasties) that have fallen through time all over England.

Primeval's main problem, for me, is that it's actually quite slow-moving. For all the quick editing, slick direction, good quality special effects, and quick start to the plot, once things get to the meat of the situation not much happens. For instance, this week's episode resolves (sort of) and moves on from last season's cliffhanger in a matter of seconds, then rushes us through a revised setup, before sending the team out on a new mission, all within about five minutes. And then, for the next 50, they run around a shopping centre trying (and usually failing) to stop a pair of raptors. Sensible plotting and large chunks of continuity gradually go out the window in the quest for new set pieces to prolong the story. The thing is, there's just not enough actual plot to fill the running time, so we're left with half a storyline stretched out with repetitive action sequences. Usually non-sensical ones. That repeat themselves.

I don't want to be too harsh on Primeval. Well, OK, I do a little. It does have its moments, now and then: some of the action is quite decent, the mystery of the anomalies is occasionally intriguing, and there's even the odd moment of something approaching character development. Even the acting seems to have improved on season one, although as I came to this after watching last night's Echo Beach it would be hard not to look good. On that topic, Moving Wallpaper's Ben Miller is here, still as hopelessly out of place as ever -- though I've come to believe that's not really his fault: he's great in his show with Alexander Armstrong, he's the best thing about the whole of that Cornish-based-soap-production-hour (I need to find a catchier combined title for that...), but in Primeval his character is simply badly written. He's actually quite well-cast for the role intended, it's just that the intended role shouldn't be such dismal comic relief. And now they've given him an all-too-similar and equally bizarre sidekick/deputy, just to compound the problem. Oh dear.

This is just one of Primeval's flaws that, in spite of the fun and excitement, do still niggle away, occasionally bursting through into unmissable obviousness. Primeval can be fun, but you suspect that with a bit more effort that sentence could read, "Primeval is fun."