STUDIO: BBC/Warner Brothers
RELEASE DATE: November 4, 2008
STARRING: Douglas Henshall, James Murray, Lucy Brown, Hannah Spearritt, and Andrew Lee Potts
CREATED BY: Adrian Hodges & Tim Haines
FEATURES: Audio Commentary
The Making of Primeval
"Through the Anomaly" by Andrew Lee Potts

Miss Lost and Battlestar Galactica? Pick up the first volume of Primeval, the B-movie masterpiece courtesy of BBC. Critics are always raving about the quality fare that HBO, FX, and Showtime are presenting on a regular basis, but I have to raise my critical hand and say that I couldn't live without BBC America. Great mini-series - State of Play, Jekyll - and some of the best shows on TV in the last decade - Life on Mars, Torchwood, Robin Hood, Doctor Who - if you're not watching BBC, you're missing a lot of great television. One of those great shows is Primeval, a series that mixes B-movie charms like giant crocodiles and dinosaur attacks along with fascinating multi-episode arcs and believable characters. A fantastic cast, interesting mysteries, and dinosaurs - what more do you want from a TV on DVD set?

A dinosaur crosses a grocery store parking lot, chasing a poor girl, and the thought I can't shake is why didn't someone think of this earlier? Sure, The Sci-Fi Channel has had a number of horrible movies involving dinosaurs in modern times (the aptly-named Raptor Island springs to mind), but with the modern resurgence of TV sci-fi, especially on the BBC with the great Doctor Who and greater Torchwood, why hasn't there been a "dinos in modern times" show that took its production seriously? Enter Primeval, another solid hit for one of the more consistently interesting networks out there, BBC America. After a few rough spots in the premiere, Primeval settles into a nice groove and should entertain millions of genre fans looking for something new on DVD this holiday season. Keep your holiday movies. Give me Primeval.

"Darwin provides most of the answers. It's the pieces that don't fit that interest me." So says Professor Cutter (Douglas Henshall), a man interested in reports of unusual fossils and grainy pictures of never-before-seen creatures who finds himself in the middle of the story of the millennium when a rift opens up between time periods, allowing big, scaly baddies to roam the forest, try and eat children, and snack on bovine. Imagine a window between now and 20,000 years ago. Primeval actually plays it mostly straight with government involvement (a la the conspiracies at the heart of The X-Files) trying to cover up the discovery and life-and-death action scenes. How would people respond to such a discovery? Both people who know something about the period and average people whose awareness of dinos extends only to the work of Michael Crichton? Making matters more interesting is that Cutter's wife Helen disappeared near the rift years earlier and the Professor finds evidence that she survived for at least a while in prehistoric times and may actually still be alive.

What BBC shows are getting right that Sci-Fi Channel shows aren't is the perfect mix of the ridiculous and the serious. You need to take your concept seriously, but you also can't make a show about giant prehistoric spiders with a completely straight face. There needs to be a little tongue-in-cheek but also not over-the-top cheese like the Sci-Fi Channel original movies. It's that balance that's so difficult to maintain that the Brits seem to get right more often than the Americans and it's that balance that Primeval totally nails. It's one of the more interestingly written new shows of 2008.

The video and audio on the first volume of Primeval are good because BBC/WB spreads out the 13 episodes of the first two seasons over four discs. Fewer episodes per disc makes for higher video and audio quality. But the special features are a little "eh". The 45-minute making-of is great and there's a detailed look at the second season but the commentaries are hard to find (they're on 7 and 10 by the show's producers and director) and there are no deleted scenes or cast commentaries. Sci-fi fans have come to expect treasure troves of special features and Primeval is just so-so in that department. Fans deserve more. Even the ones who don't know they love Primeval yet but soon will.