I tried watching this old BBC series with an interesting premise: strange, random anomalies keep popping up around Great Britain, providing temporary two-way passages to and from the distant past. It’s a great set up for a monster-of-the-week series, as ancient creatures pop up and terrify the locals and give the scientist protagonists opportunities to travel to the past. I like the idea!
But then, in the very first episode, Cutter, who is searching for his wife lost in the past, finds a human skeleton in the dirt, he quickly runs his fingers over the rib cage, and announces, “It’s not her. It’s a male.” Say what? Do the writers have the bad idea that men and women differ in the number of ribs? That would be embarrassingly bad.
I braved the second episode, which features giant ancient spiders! Way to sidle past my doubts, writers. These spiders have massive chelicerae which seem to be orthognathous, much like those found in tarantulas (the Aranea are labidognathous, and can pinch their pointy little fangs together.) Some people are bitten and envenomed, and some dork suggests that they can’t be spiders, they must be scorpions, which is silly, since scorpions have relative small chelicerae. I had to stop there, because the credibility of the scientific contributions of the writing team is about nil at this point.
For those of you familiar with the show, is it worth it for me to continue? I’m here for relaxing entertainment, not exercising my arm shaking my fist at the TV.
Now I’m ruining it further for myself. An open portal that allows the free passage of dinosaurs and people is going to be a massive meteorological catastrophe, buecause it’s a small point with a gigantic temperature, oxygen, and pressure differential across it. Damn it.
Whoa! Confusion.
Based on the title I was gonna say great show! Watch it all!
But then you described something other than a 1 season Western.
Had to go searching.
Aaah. American Primeval is on Netflix.
It’s a good one if you like westerns. And it’s only 6 episodes.
I’m still a bit torn about the ending…
Even better is Godless on Netflix. If you haven’t see it, don’t take anything from the title. The town is godless because they don’t have a pastor for their church. And that fact doesn’t really inform the story at all. It’s just a damn good western with a great shootout at the end.
No it’s not. I watched it when released and if you can let go of your critical facilities you might enjoy it. But I couldn’t and fell off watching it as it’s story got more involved and less interesting.
Yeah, I saw that article.
Scientists Discover a Hidden Supervolcano Buried Beneath England
At the time, i thought it would be interesting – the graphics were done by the same team that had made the very successful original Walking With Dinosaurs ( / Beasts / Monsters) series from the 90s. Yeah the science in those wasn’t perfect but it was still a really good presentation.
Alas as the show got underway they took each of the models of generally calm, self-interested, but realistic creatures…and turned them all into ‘monsters’, adding traits for the scare and thrill…but lost me on the lack of science of any type in this science-fiction.
The ‘Walking With’ people did better when they went back to simulated science with the BBC a little later on (Prehistoric Park), but this had promise but turned into a low point.
I liked it. It does require a modicum of suspension of disbelief, but it was pretty well-written, considering how bonkers the concept is. Also, it is a British show in the truest sense – it is not interested in churning out the same repetitive nonsense, over and over, for over a dozen episodes a season. It takes risks, kills popular characters, and takes some fascinating detours as you get to season (series?) 2 and 3. So to my North American brain, it was a nice bit of novelty, although I expect British people are not impressed to the same degree I was.
Note that it is science FICTION though, in the tradition of “what would happen if X crazy thing happened in Y modern place? How would Z people adapt to their zany new world?” Also…I found it quite funny, like…deliberately comedic in a way that doesn’t beat the audience over the head with the joke (also a trait of British television, I’ve noticed). But I watched it like…over 10 years ago, so it may or may not hold up.
The theme song is tremendous, IMHO. The rest is, uh, a bit mixed, as you’ve seen, although I doubt that scene was meant to be counting the ribs. (I don’t remember the scene, but the show is certainly not creationist.) Anyway… I liked it. There’s not that much of it, either way — 36 episodes.
The way team members were chosen, and how far they drifted from their supposed specialties, was probably the worst of it, for me.
It features several actors who later became prominent in other shows, so if you watch much British TV, you can annoy people by saying “Oh, I know him from Primeval.”
Nemo:
I found it in YouTube.
It most certainly is just that; the hips are still interred.
Literally running his fingers along.
Here:
https://youtu.be/WE-PUUN65ME?t=206
See? I didn’t make it up. He was counting ribs to make a determination of sex. Absolute nonsense.
I vaguely remember watching several episodes of this, most likely from the first series because I remember the reason why I stopped watching it. If I’ve got the right programme it was reasonably captivating at first, chasing dinosaurs down tunnels, but at some point somebody ends up with a pet dragon. I don’t think it breathed fire but it had four legs and two wings, so I thought the writers could stuff their hexapod stupidity up their non-evolutionary arseholes.