Shot in Australia with a reported budget of around $4 million an episode, the Fox series is scheduled to premiere in the US on 26th September.

Stuart Murphy, Sky 1 HD Director, commented: “Terra Nova is a huge weekly epic adventure with a family at the centre of the action, a community full of tension and rivalries, and some pretty scary dinosaurs. It’s cinematic, powerful and a whole lot of fun that’ll be even more fantastic in HD, and perfectly complements our exceptional line-up of British programmes and the ‘best of the US’ including Glee, House, The Simpsons and Hawaii Five-0.”

Executive produced by Steven Spielberg, the show follows “an ordinary family on an incredible journey back in time to prehistoric Earth as a small part of a daring experiment to save the human race. In the year 2149, the world is dying. The planet is overdeveloped and overcrowded, with the majority of plant and animal life extinct. The future of mankind is in doubt, and its only hope for survival is in the distant past. When scientists at the FERMI Particle Accelerator unexpectedly discovered a fracture in time that made it possible to construct a portal into primeval history, the bold notion was born to resettle humanity in the past – a second chance to rebuild civilization and get it right this time.”

The characters include: Jim Shannon (Jason O’Mara), “a devoted father with a checkered past”; Jim’s wife, Elisabeth Shannon (Shelley Conn), “a trauma surgeon and the newest addition to Terra Nova’s medical team”; their five-year-old daughter, Zoe (newcomer Alana Mansour); their 17-year-old son Josh (Landon Liboiron) – who finds himself drawn to the “beautiful and rule-breaking” Skye (Allison Miller); and Maddy (Naomi Scott), Josh’s “endearingly awkward” 15-year-old sister.

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