Shoulda, woulda, coulda and didn't end at the finale of series 3.Yet it proved to be popular, so they added more money to the budget and less money to the writers and more to the makeup and set production design than thought.If I may coin a neologism, it was disimpressing after series 3. Both the Director of photography and the editor ought to be strung out and shot.Too many quick cuts, too much Handicam action, too much photoshopped matté photography -- or "green screen" as they call it these days.

This series could be called Wilhelm Scream the series. The scream usually occurs in films and is used subtlety as in Star Wars or Lord of the rings when someone dies. Primeval has decided to use it in every episode, this becomes very old very quick. The special effects are OK, not terrible and not great, but considering Jurrsaic Park was made 14 years earlier and looked much better, it's hard to be generous even when comparing a film to a TV series. The acting is quite good, and the chartcers are believable, but the but given the sensational subject matter, episodes still manage to drag. All in all, there are much better sci fi shows out there, this is farely child friendly and is the most likely target audience.

This show took me by surprise, and that's hard to do. As clever as the current crop of TV writers may THINK they are, they are essentially riffing on someone else's stories. (Like the man once said, there are only 4 basic plots anyway). And then along comes this. It was fabulously clever. Temporal anomalies. Beasties popping through. All kinds of strange dynamics among the group, strange motives, conspiracies, love triangles. When Juliet Aubrey turned out to be bad, that was good. When Hannah Spearritt ignored the protocols and "adopted" one of the creatures, that was ever better (and later episodes put the little guy's life in jeopardy more than once). The high rating is for the concept, the execution, and holding interest over several seasons. On DVD or streaming, this should be more fun than a barrel of hammers. And here is a tip -- I peeked at the IMDb page for the sequel, which was little more than an attempt to resurrect a dead show in North America using complete unknowns (something they tried to do, believe it or not, with THE AVENGERS decades ago). The few episodes I saw were wretched. Avoid it.

The original series (1-3) were very good, and I would advise watching them (especially series three). thought they had the odd minor issue, like Danny suddenly being able to fly a helicopter or no one reporting seeing a dinosaur walking the streets of wherever you let it slip because realistically the show would be boring if it was 100% realistic (lots of paper work)But with its comeback as series four and five these issues became more obvious. I understand if they have had there budget Marjory cut but that does no mean the hire a seven-year-old for a script writers, for instance (in no particular order):when mat is fighting a 'tree creeper' to save CGI cost he just waves a blade at a camera rather than actually fight it. (and this animal is the same size of a hyena but is fought off with a four inch knife? wtf?)the writers make no attempt to go into the curiosity or shock that Emily (ruth Bradley) must be in to come from the Victorian era to modern day. Torchwood made a whole episode based on that!!the writers COMPLETELY contradict themselves (or their predecessors) when it come to Helen (she is dead as well, can't they let a character go?) when she apparently tries to cause the post apocalyptic future by making a big anomaly that will apparently kill the world (the skip the detail on how)Conor and abbey are the only people in both series having any sort of interesting relationship, which is then overused to the point of ridicule they replace weapons which we are familiar with (normal bullet firing g36s) to 'laser tasers'the new arc is rather gloomythe computer technician and the head of security have a relationship which has the realism and maturity as the one in w.a.l.l.e (pixar)they miss out any form of scientific data to the point that the physics in doctor who seems more likely the new series is basically based at completely the wrong age-group, and I would not advise watching it unless you are 10 or under. they clearly didn't realise that 12 to 16 etc is the more profitable age group which the original series was aimed at. this is why there are so many angry primeval fans who don't like the new series, the producer forgot what age group he was aiming at (or just hired the director of trolls 2 to write the script).