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 It is not 60 years old and outdated and even the language (and pretty much of the culture) is the same, so why bother and make things worse?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.

The original UK *Primeval* remains to this day one of my favorite guilty pleasures. And while some of the characters in that version left me a bit cold, and I found the ups and downs caused by poor network treatment frustrating, I never tired of the dry humor or complicated and mixed character motivations as they battled anomalies, creatures, and humans determined to use both to achieve greater power. The situations created suspense: You were always wondering how they were going to get out of this week's predicament. In this version, the motives are straightforward, all goodness all the time: Save the modern world from time anomalies and creatures that arrive through them. These creatures often predate humans, and, being out of place, generally cause trouble, including approaching humans an interesting new prey species. The problem I have is that we have not yet (as of July 2013 on the SyFy run of the first season) been given a clear reason as to why these particular characters are doing this; there is very little to motivate them to do this work, and the context does not make the need for them doing it particularly critical nor gripping. There's no scientific researcher like Cutter, driven by pure scientific curiosity about the phenomenon, just a entrepreneur who lost a loved one to an anomaly creature and who finds the experience an adrenaline rush. We have no sense of what he hopes to achieve long-term. There are no hard-core nerds like Connor, no animal lovers like Abby, and apparently no interest in obtaining the tech that enabled the UK team to put anomalies in a holding pattern to prevent more wayward creatures from getting lost in the wrong time (while of course dealing with those that had slipped through before they could be stopped). (Which means there is always at least one character left "guarding" the anomaly. Boring....) And when this team discusses tech, it's in the context of the tech expert providing a nice app for their phone as a done deal, whereas the process of creating tech in the original was suspenseful: Will it work, will it help, how much does it need to be tweaked, etc. Sometimes tech failures contributed to the action. So every week we're introduced to a new creature that must be returned to its time, and we watch the characters do relatively boring things to figure out how to accomplish this. Civilians are tangentially involved, but with the exception of one episode, rarely do we see their involvement in any depth. (And that episode's civilian was not depicted in a manner that even made us worry about her or collateral damage in general, as we always did in the original, which even included a character who had grown to adulthood by traveling through alternate times after being drawn into an anomaly as a child.) Meanwhile, as the creatures are being tracked, the characters tell us their life stories, which gets very old very quickly. (Seriously, why would we be interested, beyond the basic reason they're involved in the first place? Backstories are for storyboards to guide the actions of a character in the current situation, but it's the current situation where the focus for the audience exists.) For example, in an episode that should've ratcheted the suspense to the rafters, main characters being stalked by raptors similar to the velociraptors of Jurassic Park, we're being bored to death listening to one character talk to two others about their feelings about the death of loved ones. The ultimate capture was so anti-climatic, it was hard to believe they were in any danger to begin with. And there is no "big bad" here, either, a character with a hidden agenda, wanting to use the phenomenon to achieve bigger goals, like the original's Helen Cutter and her first quest to start a prehistoric zoo, and then ultimately end humanity because humanity was destroying the planet. (Granted, her character was a bit of a mess, but at least she kept things interesting, and kept viewers guessing.) While the butterfly effect is alluded to, no one seems particularly interested in either changing history, nor showing concern that others might want to.Ultimately, even if they want to limit this version to a weekly creature feature, they need to up the action, reduce the chit-chat, and make the process of capturing the creatures suspenseful. If they really want to make this sci-fi in the tradition that the original followed, they need far more depth to the characters and the stories. The UK *Primeval* was not a perfect show by any means, but by comparison to this show, it was imaginative and action-packed. It's as if these showrunners have found a formula and are sticking to it, even if it is boring as hell. There is potential here. The actors are good, and the characters have the potential to be interesting. Now they need to add more imagination, suspense, and action. i.e., they should ask themselves the question that it was clear the original's creators asked, what would I do if I were in this situation? It is, after all the question that every good sci-fi story wants its audience to ask.

Before it went to air the producers promised "this new take on the UK series 'Primeval' would be darker and scarier"; it's not and I'm yet to see "plots and character development move between the two series" which they also promised.The original Primeval had already laid the groundwork for this spin off to build off, but so far Primeval New World is just a watered down version of the original show with rather uninteresting, weak characters running around with no expertise or authority but behaving like they have both the expertise and authority to do so.Instead of the premise being taken in a whole new and exciting direction, all we have so far is a poor mans copy of the original with every episode basically a variation on the week preceding.There are no story arcs to keep you interested and very little character development. Literally, if all of the main characters got killed off one week, it wouldn't make the slightest difference to the overall plot.I really hope they lift their game in future episodes or this show will go the way of the dinosaur.

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).