When I was a kid, back in those pre-cable days of only three TV channels, children's programming was limited to Saturday mornings.  One of the most exciting programs to premier in that time slot, at least to my 10-year-old mind, was Land of the Lost.  A live action show about dinosaurs, how cool is that?  It lasted three seasons, and while it may have gotten a little silly at the end, the concept of humans vs. dinosaurs was great.  While there have been a few non-documentary dinosaur shows, it's a little surprising that there haven't been more, especially with the cost of CGI being so reasonable.  Enter Tim Haines, the creator of Walking with Dinosaurs and its multiple spin-offs.  He, along with partner Adrian Hodges, came up with an adventure/drama series about a group of people who are fighting incursions of dinosaurs into out time, Primeval.  The first two seasons (or series as they are referred to in Britain) have now arrived on DVD.  While there are only 13 episodes in both seasons, the show is pretty exciting and surprisingly engrossing.

The world has changed, only most people don't know it.  All of a sudden, without explanation, "anomalies" have started to appear throughout England.  Looking like a shiny moving circle of broken crystals, these anomalies are actually doorways into the past.  Two-way doorways which allow dinosaurs and prehistoric monsters to enter our world with often deadly results.

The first of these anomalies is discovered by Nick Cutter (Douglas Henshall), a biologist, his assistant and all around tough guy Stephen Hart (James Murray), and one of Cutter's students, the geeky but intelligent Connor Temple (Andrew Lee Potts).  Soon a local zoo worker, Abby Maitland (Hannah Spearritt), also stumbles upon the anomaly while investigating a supposedly extinct lizard a boy had found, as well as Claudia Brown (Lucy Brown), a low-level government official who was sent out to investigate the strange reportings.

Cutter is especially interested in the anomaly since his wife, Helen (Juliet Aubrey), had disappeared in the area eight years ago investigating some odd sightings.  Her body was never found, but maybe this is the answer to what happened to her.

As it turns out, yes she did find an anomaly and has been living in the distant past all these years.  She's been studying the dinosaurs and the gateways and now knows much, much, more than anyone else about them.  She's not willing to share however, and seems to have a plan of her own.

Each episode Cutter and his makeshift team discover another dinosaur incursion into our time and have to track, capture, and return the creature to its own time before the temporary anomaly closes.  Oh yeah, and they have to make sure that no one else notices either.  Their work is top secret since the government doesn't want a panic.  From Arthropleura to Scutosaurus and everything in between (including Saber Tooth Tigers, Pteranodons and the ever-popular Raptors) they encounter every type of creature imaginable, and some that aren't, like a carnivorous, intelligent, predator from the future.

This is a fun and exciting show that is whizzes by much too quickly.  The characters and situations that they find themselves in are so enjoyable it's easy to overlook the fact that much of the show is a bunch of hokum.  There are a lot of plot holes if you stop to think about it, and the group doesn't always think things through (why wasn't everyone armed when they were fighting the raptors?)  Some of the events are down right stupid (why did they give a criminal a 6 inch knife and a back pack full of supplies when they went they were afraid that she'd try to escape?)  But if you can overlook these events you'll find a great program.

One of the reasons that the show works so well is that it's not just a 'monster of the week' type program.  Though there is a new prehistoric antagonist each episode, the program is largely character driven for the most part.  Like Stargate SG-1, seeing the team work together and solve the latest problem is the show's driving force.

There's also a lot of mystery in the show.  Not only is the nature of the anomalies something that is pondered, but just how Helen manages to navigate through the various ages is a big conundrum.  Helen certainly knows more than she's letting on, having been studying this effect and how to use it for the past eight years, and it's not clear whose side she's on.

The show isn't afraid to shake things up unexpectedly either.  The end of the first season contains a big shock, and what's more surprising is the way they deal with it.  The show also adds new characters and writes other ones out on a fairly regular basis, so things always seem new and fresh.

A show like this succeeds or fails in a large part due to the special effects.  Created by the same group that did the "Walk with..." series of dinosaur documentaries, the CGI creatures generally look pretty good.  Sometimes the CGI doesn't mesh perfectly with the surrounding, and dinosaurs 'feel' a little bit superimposed rather than part of the set itself, but the effects work more than they don't and especially in the exterior scenes it's easy to suspend your disbelief.

The one exception to this is the saber-tooth tiger.  This creature looks fairly horrid due to its coat.  Hair is hard to model on a computer (it takes A LOT of time to do it right... ask anyone that worked on Monsters Inc.) and in this case the results are lacking.  The animal's fur looks like a skin more than exterior hair.  It's shiny and smooth and individual fibers weren't modeled so you can't pick them out.  They should have stuck with reptiles.

The 13 episodes that make up seasons one and two come on four DVDs that are housed in a fold out book.   This comes in a nice slipcase.  The one thing they forgot to include anywhere on the packaging is a list of episodes.  It's rather irritating when you're not sure which disc to pop in to find the episode that comes after the last one you watched.

Audio:

The stereo audio track first the show well, thought it would have been enhanced by a 5.1 mix.  The show is centers the dialog on the screen, but I couldn't help imagining how much more intense some of the dinosaur scenes would have been with a full surround mix.  The voices are clean and clear, though there are one or two times when it's hard to understand every word from a rapidly delivered speech due to the accents.  Luckily there are optional subtitles.

Video:

The 1.78:1 anamorphic image isn't as crisp and tight as I would have liked, though it does pretty good.  Being a recent show I was hoping the colors would have been a bit brighter and the blacks just a tad darker, but these are more nit-picky problems that any real flaw with the picture quality.  There is some digital noise in a couple of scenes where the sky is predominant in the framing, and a little aliasing, but again, these are minor problems.  When all is said and done this is a solid looking TV show on DVD.  Just not reference quality.

Extras:

There are two video extras included with the set.  First off is Primeval:  Behind the Scenes a 45-minute long look at season one.  They talk to the cast and crew, show copious clips from the series, and go into how the special effects are created.  It was more than a typical EPK piece and was pretty entertaining.  Through the Anomaly is the corresponding piece for the second season, and it's the better of the two.  There's a good deal of info contained in both featurettes.

There's also an audio commentary for episode 10 with co-creators Tim Haines and Adrian Hodges as well as director Jamie Payne.  It was a pretty dry commentary, with the trio commenting on how long it took to film certain shots, and how great all the actors were.  They did comment on how luck American TV shows are since they can film exterior scenes in and around LA where the weather is always so nice.

Final Thoughts:

It would be easy to point out a list of plot holes and nonsensical actions by the cast of this show, but that would be missing the point.  There are dinosaurs fighting humans!  Watching this it's easy to regress to a 10 year old and just marvel at what's going on.  With an interesting cast of characters and some decent CGI, this is a very fun show to watch.  As long as you don't think about it too much.  Recommended.