Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Primeval - Series 1, Episode 2

Spoiler Level: Medium

Did I mention that I really, really, really, REALLY hate spiders?  My god, this episode was worse than Arachnaphobia.  It played on every fear of spiders I have.  My skin was crawling, I was flinching at every itch on my body, and I was looking behind me.  And that was with me closing my eyes whenever I could.  Congratulations, Primeval, you've succeeded in scaring the hell out of me.

Once we got to the giant centipede it wasn't so bad.  The centipede was creepy, but creepy in a way I could handle. It worked better than the Centaurapede from K9, but that may be because I was already creeped out by the time it showed up.  And as long as I'm comparing Primeval to K9, it occurred to me today that the character of Lester in Primeval is what the character of Drake is trying to be on K9. I don't know if it's better writing here or better acting on behalf of Ben Miller or a combination of both (although I suspect it's the latter, with apologies to Connor Van Vuuren).

The characters continue to be enjoyable, with a nice love triangle forming between Connor, Abby and Stephen (aka "The Young and the Beautiful"), and with Helen's story moving along fairly quickly.  That's the nice thing about British shows; with only 6 episodes to the season, they don't waste time.

Once again, I also like the bigger implications, that certain evolutionary gaps were potentially caused by the anomalies.  I hope they keep following up on that line of thinking.


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