llywela | (no subject)

Meh. I've somehow manifested yet another cold – goodness knows where this one came from. At least it isn't like the last thing I had, which was all high temperature and feeling wiped out but no actual cold symptoms. This one is definitely a cold – sore throat, sneezing, stuffy nose, bleary eyes, ringing ears, the works. I've decided to blame the air conditioning in work.

Primeval is a new show I'd seen advertised and thought looked interesting, but then completely forgot to watch when it was aired on Saturday, and also missed the Sunday repeat. Typical. But, thanks to the wonders of the Internet, I managed to get hold of the pilot episode on having had its existence pointed out to me. And…I really enjoyed it.

A lot of the elements in the mix felt like they were drawn from a variety of sources – a dash of Stargate here, a whiff of Walking With Dinosaurs there – but they do say there is no such thing as originality, and it's what you do with the borrowed inspiration that counts. Here, a variety of elements from a variety of different sources were drawn together to create something completely new. A rift in space/time is discovered by chance in the Forest of Dean, creating a two-way portal through which creatures from the past – dinosaurs – may travel into the modern world, and modern people can also travel into the past. The discovery is completely new and unexpected, and therefore no one quite knows what to do about it, as it comes and goes randomly. Thus there's scope for all kinds of wacky hijinks as theories are drawn up and tested, and the anomaly is explored or sealed off or whatever.

Add to this an engaging cast – I found myself genuinely interested in all of them, apart from the annoying student, who was however clearly intended to be annoying, although I couldn't quite work out why Cutter would have such an Action Man as his lab technician – and an ongoing sense of mystery around the fate of Cutter's long-missing wife, and the remainder of the six-part series has been nicely set up. One to watch.