Primeval: The Complete Series 2 [2008]

As series one of Primeval reached its devastating conclusion Professor Nick Cutter was having a rather bad day. And he still is. His estranged wife Helen has deceived him; tricking him into going through the anomalies one last time. But something has gone terribly wrong. Upon his return to the present, the world as he knows it has changed. And He and Helen are the only ones who know. When series two opens, Claudia Brown has never existed and the others have no idea who she was. Can Nick convince his team that their actions have inadvertently altered the course of nature? But he has absolutely no idea what went wrong or how he can fix it…
Along the way Nick and his team encounter some beastly opponents that find their way through the anomalies. From a family of raptors going wild in the aisles of a local shopping mall, a sabre-tooth at an amusement park, to a Woolly Mammoth holding up the traffic on the M25, the creatures just keep on coming…
Includes exclusive DVD extra ‘Through The Anomaly’, an access all areas behind the scenes documentary made by Andrew-Lee Potts.
Also including audio commentaries.
Primeval may be a little daft, and it may be ITV trying to capture some of the success that the BBC has enjoyed with Doctor Who, but for brainless Saturday night entertainment, it’s quite a blast.
Picking up from where the series before it left off, it finds Professor Nick Cutter and his team once again dealing with creatures quite literally out of their time. But this time, Primeval has a few more tricks up its sleeve. Because while the convention for much of series one was that the creatures that faced Cutter and his crew were arriving from the past, this time round there are monsters from the future to worry about too. Cue the likes of a woolly mammoth on the motorway, and a raptor-esque chase around a shopping centre.
Primeval then blends in some twisty narratives surrounding the characters themselves, which – while not particularly intricate or surprising – do keep the fun jollying along. And backed up with special effects that range from the very good to the slightly creaky, it does its best to throw as much at the screen as it can.
Superior to the season that preceded it, but still with some way to go to be regarded as any kind of classic, Primeval is nonetheless undoubtedly still very good fun, and the seven episodes here are suitable for family viewing too. Enjoyable, and worth checking out. –Jon Foster