YOU have to watch “Primeval” for the same reason you once had to watch the Jerry Lewis Telethon – to see which horrifying, scaly, 100-million-year-old fossil comes back to life and scuttles out of the wings next.
BBC America’s splashy new sci-fi show has storylines and special effects that earn it the right to be called “Jurassic Park” meets “The X-Files” – but as produced by the writing staff of “Land of the Lost.”
State-of-the-art writing this is not. An evolutionary zoologist (Douglas Henshaw), his hunky assistant (James Murray) and a random student (Andrew Lee-Potts) stumble across a doorway to the prehistoric past through which dinosaurs have been passing.
The doorway, which everyone calls “the anomaly,” works both ways, so our heroes can venture back to dino-times and even carry a hose or a rope so they can be yanked back if they find themselves the toy in a T-Rex’s Happy Meal.
The effects are not only superb, they are plentiful, unlike in “The X-Files.”The digital images are on a par with the ones in “Jurassic Park” and they’re comparable to the work in any but the biggest-budget theatrical releases.
In the four episodes made available to critics, the show threatens to fall into a rut. Some piece of walking lunchmeat who gets one line of dialogue or fewer -often “Arrrgh!” – is riding the train, or diving into a pool, or doing laundry, when a pointy-toothed prehistoric beast modeled after a scorpion, or a crocodile, or a really nasty flamingo, turns up in search of a snack.
The rest of the cast then investigates and clashes with this week’s guest monster only to narrowly escape, at which time the anomaly closes up shop, threatening to reappear at a random place next week.
The overarching storyline is where the suspense develops. The prof’s wife disappeared eight years ago investigating similar phenomena and is presumed dead.
But maybe she’s still alive on the other side of the anomaly, is popping into the present day to deliver a message or maybe she’s not quite the same person the prof remembers her to be.
Sinister government types are on the case too, though it isn’t clear whether officialdom is simply trying to keep a lid on dino-panic or has nefarious and complicated motives.
If it’s the latter, this show could evolve into something more interesting than a guilty pleasure.