supermaggie I strongly believe in story/the idea, and I tend to believe that the story is everything. That this is not the case is proved by remakes. I am not in general against remakes, but most remakes do not add to the story, but take things away. Perfect examples are the remakes of Life on Mars and Primeval. Primeval may be overdoing it, but it does not add something more, quite the opposite, the new version has more gore, but no new ideas and the viewer painfully misses the charm, the fun, the soul and heart of the original version. This does not mean that the idea isn't still strong, but the original version is just a lot better. But as with all things: in the end it is a matter of taste and therefore there will be and should be fans for each version. I, personally, e.g., prefer the US-Version of Being Human, which is criticized by many fans of the original. I think the creators of the remake made great casting decisions in this case and the US-version has (still) a lot of soul and fun and charm. This is not (and cannot be) true in the case of Life on Mars - if something is this perfect, why change it? It is not 60 years old and outdated and even the language (and pretty much of the culture) is the same, so why bother and make things worse? So: the new Primeval has nothing on the original, but the idea is still strong and tastes differ, so a well-meant 6.

Oliver Rendchen Primeval: New World is now set in Canada and very much like the UK series you have a main male character and something happens to his wife. This urges him to research about the anomalies and hunt dinosaurs with a few friends. Now in the first few episodes they established and created everything that first 4 series of the UK Primeval did. I mean it took until series 3 to point out that anomalies effect mythology whereas in New World they stated it in episode two. And also some episodes did feel like remakes - a lot; honestly, on some episodes it's like someone got the original screenplay and then just changed names and locations. But apart from all that it was very enjoyable; they kept making references to Primeval every now and again and the ARC plays an role in there too. So I think it is a pretty good spin-off to one of my favourite shows and it even brought new story-lines and events what were quite new but also a lot of plots that we'd seen before back in the UK. It did end on a cliff-hanger like pretty much every Primeval series did and unfortunately it has now been cancelled so we will never see season 2; but like I said, this spin-off was a good run and pays homage to its roots so that was good.I suppose that's the end of the Primeval franchise all together now then but I hope people remember this great piece of entertainment.

Mark Carlton Yikes. Not much else to say about this. Having seen the main character in Eureka I decided to give it a shot as he did a pretty good job in his previous works.The premise of the show is that these random anomalies keep showing up around the city that can traverse time. Specifically to the Jurassic era. The anomalies can take you to that point in time or in worse cases, bringing dinosaurs to our time. It sounds like a decent basis for a show no doubt.The real issue here is that past this, there is no real substance to the show. The writing is lifeless, the creativity we've seen in shows like Star Trek, Stargate and Eureka are non-existent. It's like each episode the entire dialogue is meant to build up an epic action scene... which in itself is shallow, not mentioning that the action scenes are bland and not at all epic.I tend to be open-minded with shows, and can enjoy shows rated in the 7s as much as the ones in the 9s. This is seriously unwatchable though. Really, screw this. I'm going to watch some Stargate.

bravo11 The BEST thing about Primeval: New World is that it shows how brilliant the ORIGINAL Primeval series is. The original is like your favorite childhood desert, so tasty and flavorful. Now, as an adult, you find that while someone has resurrected the brand, it's now just bland and nothing special.In New World, the main character is Evan Cross, the team LEADER, unlike the original where Conner, the sidekick, is the protagonist. Except for the "pocket change" appearance of Conner in the 1st episode, the surviving original cast are nowhere to be seen, nor are any story lines carried forward. New World is "leader centric" - everything revolves around Evan, so no risk of anything happening to him... Yawn.The series does pick up (trudging through 8 episodes), and episode 8 does have a nice twist, unlike the original where a number of episodes had "nice" twists. Here, most episodes are "cookie cutter": man-eating creature {fill in the blank name} comes through, causes havoc, and must be returned to its own time. Yawn.What you don't see is the humor of the original: James Lester is SORELY missed. The Conner/Abby relationship interest is replaced by a triangle (or should that be quadrangle if you don't exclude the dead), but the situations merely serve as pauses between the man-eating dino's (as in CGI is expensive, and we need to have 45 minutes in an episode, so...). Yawn.Again, where the original had an arc, a sense of direction carried through multiple seasons, a PLAN (I imagine the creators had a notebook with a design of where they wanted to be at the end of each season, for a number of seasons, with directions of how to get there), New World's playbook seems to be "Let's make Season ONE, and we'll worry about subsequent seasons IF we're renewed. It seems that a shorter season (original) IS better than a longer season (New World).So maybe it'll pick up after the Christmas break. It is worth slogging through the season so far just in case. Consider it an "ironing" program - you know, something that you can watch while you iron, distracting, but not something you have to, nor want to, devote full attention to. (Maybe that's their market: an audience wrapped up in texting, checking e-mail, needing noise as background).