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The Saturday night TV series Primeval has been billed as ITV’s answer to Doctor Who. It’s taken them long enough to think of something – or has it? Charlie Brooker, in his entertaining Screenwipes on BBC4, sees Sapphire and Steel as ITV’s original rival to Doctor Who. There’s also The Tomorrow People, which ran for a few years in the 70s, and let’s not forget Space 1999, Gerry Anderson’s short lived effort also from the same period. But let’s face it, ITV’s competition to Doctor Who has always been a bit thin on the ground.

So how does Primeval fare? Pretty good, at least in my house. It’s better than Torchwood, and after watching the final episode on Saturday I’m going to suggest that it might be better than Doctor Who. Primeval is about Professor Nick Cutter, played by Douglas Henshall, and his small team of young and attractive people who are investigating an outbreak of anomalies. This is a word that crops up quite frequently in the series, and an anomaly in this context is a hole in time (or something like that) which gives the excuse for Primeval‘s main premise – all sorts of dangerous prehistoric monsters sneaking through the anomalies and rampaging around in modern settings.

Scenarios so far have included:

• A dinosaur rampaging through some woods and deliberately terrorising a small boy
• Huge scorpions loose on the London Underground
• A prehistoric crocodile at large
• Dodos. Okay – not very frightening – but these ones carry a rather nasty parasite
• A homage to Hitchcock’s The Birds with the skies full of prehistoric winged creatures
• Just as we’re becoming over familiar with prehistoric monsters, a dangerous predator from the future

Primeval also has a subplot involving Cutter’s wife Helen, missing and presumed dead until she is discovered living in and out of the anomalies. She knows a lot about what’s going on, much more than she’s prepared to let on. She’s also one of the most headstrong female characters I’ve ever seen in a British TV series, somebody for who the term doesn’t suffer fools glady is most apt. She won’t take any shit, and when it’s Helen materialising from an anomaly instead of a 20 foot dinosaur I’m more afraid.

Character-wise, there’s a lot for the viewer to get their teeth into, with several interlocking love triangles being revealed as the series progressed. Apparently Hannah Spearitt has caused quite a stir by skipping around in her panties, and if you search for Primeval on YouTube these are the scenes that you are most likely to find. All of the actors make a good job of making the preposterous premise believable, and Ben Miller provides a comic turn as a disbelieving top civil servant.

The series manages to pull off all of the ridiculous situations it throws at us, there’s some outstanding special effects (are we supposed to say “CGI” these days?), and – unlike Torchwood – all of the supporting team are quite likeable. Primeval also had one of the best cliffhanger endings for its final episode that I’ve ever seen, throwing the gauntlet down at Doctor Who‘s feet and shouting “touché!”

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