After last week’s realisation that the dinos from the series have all been caught and contained by Leek, the team are trapped underground and it seems are all on their way to becoming attractive sabre-tooth snacks. Split up, not trusting each other and with no chance of escape, the outcome looks bleak. Will the team overcome their differences realise they have been played and escape alive? Well season three has been commissioned, so you work it out. Again jam-packed with film homages, the entire show is just one long rummage through the best bits of movies you have seen before. From Alien to Jurassic Park to The Matrix, the show’s snaffling of plot devices and set ups is surely tantamount to intellectual theft. However it’s all done so convincingly badly that Spielberg and co. would get nothing from suing ITV. And it’s the cliché-ridden badness that really makes the show so fun. From the Predator-like chase between Cutter and the Future-Predator thingy, to a bit of Doom, the Gladiator set piece with Abby and a Sabre-tooth tiger, through to the Tremors homage on what looks like Southend beach with Stephen and a giant underground based scorpion, the set pieces work. They’re fun, and even though you have seen them before in other things are great entertainment. Primeval is, ultimately, a cheap, cheerful bundle of fun that will be missed on Saturdays, with the only thing now worth watching being Harry Hill, as the horrific forms of Ant and Dec return to our screens and convince us all to get ready earlier and get out to the pub quicker. Now why can’t they get eaten by a raptor?
