Emmigrating monsters

It’s not a new thing to strip away an idea from a foreign shore and try to recreate the success the series had on its home ground. It’s not even unheard of, thanks to Doctor Who and its impact on BBC Worldwide, to have a series widen its location hunts and casting call to a more global arena, allowing for international funding to be introduced along with a few twangy accents. What does seem original to Primeval: New World, is the concept of picking up a previously concluded TV series and relocating it wholesale to the other side of the world, and continuing the story from where the original series left off. So, dinosaurs are turning up in Vancouver, Canada. Fancy that.

“Creatures can clearly see only through a fish-eye lens”

Doing a little digging, it’s interesting to see that this has been described as a ‘spin off’ and yet is being produced by an entirely different production company. There’s still the TV-quality CGI monsters, all other-worldly creatures can clearly see only through a fish-eye lens, and the danger level sits comfortably in the very same Saturday afternoon/early evening zone as the series’ predecessor. It is the closest thing to the original as they could get, while relocating all of the scaly malevolence to the other side of the Atlantic. They’ve even got a main protagonist whose wife/girlfriend/lady-type-he’s-devoted-to was also ‘lost’ thanks to the random appearance of an anomaly. Oh yes, and they are still called ‘anomalies’, even though this crew of quickly assembled and back-story-explained adventurers have never been made aware of the fact that they appeared in Britain first. And were called ‘anomalies’.

The set-up is both familiar and reassuring, but not identical to the Brit original. Evan Cross is a wealthy businessman who directs a lot of his company’s R&D money into researching the squiggly mirror type thing that produced a magnetic disturbance and happened to be right by the monster that attacked his much beloved. Ange is his Girl-Friday, who keeps all of his assets running along nicely, Toby is the tech lady who works for him with a certain ‘geek chic’ about her. And Mac is the Brit security guy he promotes and moves into ‘special projects’ on a whim. Add to that a park ranger-style woman working in ‘predator control’ and a government bod buried in a basement with paperwork amongst reportings of things that go ‘grr’ in the night, and there’s your full set for a Canada-based Primeval gathering ready to roll by the end of episode one.

There’s even a familiar face lurking in the corners to drop snippets of info in a mysterious manner. Most agreeable. It almost makes you forget that this is supposed to be a new, fresh series. But then that’s exactly what it is – a new series, and in no way any kind of a re-vamp. If it ain’t broke…
Primeval: New World, Watch, Tuesday 8 January