Almultimavenger

Primeval is an English science-fiction monster action drama TV series originally created by Tim Haines famous for sparking the Walking With franchise. It's a show that's just tense and thrilling enough to keep adults invested and yet not too gritty or disturbing for kids to turn away from it. This is the perfect show that will bring a child's fascination with animals and speculative fiction to life, it makes the most of the simple plot and storyline by engaging the audience in an immersive speculative reality with relatable and compelling themes.

The storyline of Primeval, originally called Cutter's Bestiary follows the unveiling of anomalies as they're discovered by the English government, anomalies being their term for portals that randomly open across space and time throughout Earth's history. It's a fairly grounded world that places vulnerable characters in a science fictionalized setting as they find that animals from the past and future will stray to the present, the implications meaning timeline changes and justifying mythological creatures. The original cast consisting of professor Nick Cutter and his assistant Stephen Hart, herpetologist Abby Maitland, techie genius and paleontology student Connor Temple (my personal favorite), and their higher up James Lester who would later find an organization to investigate these showcase relatable emotions and experiences. Although the show follows a formulatic monster of the week approach they also showcase the ethical dilemmas behind harming the animals as well as various human villains who are solely focused on controlling and exploiting them. The animals themselves are antagonistic in Season 1, followed by Oliver Leak in Season 2, Cutter's misanthropic and skilled wife Helen in 3, Ethan Dowbraski in 4, and Phillip Burton in 5.

The series presents these intriguing themes and puts the characters through more stress and peril than facing saurians every few days, they also unpack the scientific properties of anomalies in their headquarters that doesn't hold back on impressing you. All in all it has good writing, characterizations, VFX, designs, and will satisfy 7-70 year olds for sure. It's entertaining for all ages, even if you don't fully understand the storyline you can enjoy the tension of the monsters onscreen. It caught the interest of my family members who weren't really paying attention to the show with the beasts anyway.

My only cons with the show, albiet these don't make it bad but rather not great, would be some reoccuring cliches, conveniences, one dimensional characters here and there, and a fairly simple overall storyline that doesn't offer too many twists or constant tension, but in that sense it gives viewers a chance to breathe as the characters would after facing their enemies. Particularly, it should be mentioned that Seasons 1-3 slowly escalate to reach full potential, 3 offering many unique creatures, character development, and more depth into their storyline due to episode length. 4 and 5 however are severe downgrades and suffer budget cuts and drops in writing quality, for example there are many recycled CGI scenes, poor special effects, slightly lower quality acting, and ultimately slow plot progression compared to the first three. Nonetheless the show is overall enjoyable and the perfect family friendly yet thrilling monster show.