Just months after the conclusion of its fourth series, following the show’s 2009 cancellation and subsequent resurrection, Primeval returns once again for a fifth run. As part of the show-saving deal made with UKTV, this new series will first be aired by digital channel Watch, before heading to its usual home of ITV1 at a later date.

Series 4 continued Primeval’s trend of being good fun, but a little thin when it came to characters – and sometimes plot – although it did manage to significantly ramp up the quality of the CGI. Primeval has always been a frustrating show; one that possesses a fantastic premise, but which rarely ever gets to explore it to its full potential. Similarly frustrating is that this fifth series was filmed concurrently with the fourth, so the producers will have been unable to take on board any criticisms levelled at them, and unable to learn from any mistakes they may have become aware of. However, having said that, this first episode does provide signs that Primeval might finally be ready to step up to the plate.

When a roadwork site collapses in on itself and one of the workers is snatched away by a creature, the ARC team are called to investigate and discover that a giant beetle-like insect has been living in a network of tunnels beneath the city. Meanwhile, Connor (Andrew-Lee Potts) gets taken to his new post at Prospero and is introduced to the ‘New Dawn’ project by calculating boss Phillip (Alexander Siddig); while back at the ARC, Lester (Ben Miller) is preparing himself for a potential knighthood.

Unfortunately, Ciaran McMenamin is still very wooden as hero Matt, but the revelations at the end of the last run (that he was sent back from the future – which many suspected anyway), have made him a slightly more interesting prospect here. With Abby (Hannah Spearitt) growing suspicious of his familiarity with the ‘future-bugs’, it looks as if his screen-time won’t be quite the drag it was during the last run – plus, with Connor now being a part of Prospero, we get more answers in this first episode than we got during the whole of the last run.

Connor’s new position holds the potential for the show to travel lots of interesting paths, and introduces a new character; foxy lab assistant April (Janice Byrne). April is super-smart – you can tell because she has her hair up and wears glasses – but her introduction so far feels like little more than a contrived way to generate tension between Connor and Abby.

Contrivances like that are a staple of Primeval, however, and fortunately the show’s other staple – the creatures – are used to great effect here. The giant insects are suitably imposing and when Connor finds himself trapped in a building with them, he must think on his feet to find a solution. The plot with the burrowing insects is, forgive the pun, nothing ground-breaking, but it at least feels as if it’s executed with a little more class than in previous years and the whole episode looks fantastic.

All the pieces are in place now, so if events at Prospero are followed through on, and Matt’s history in the future is fully explored (not to mention the likelihood of Jason Flemyng’s Danny Quinn and his crazy brother Patrick returning), then this should really be the series where Primeval finally, truly, starts to reach its potential.

Aired at 8pm on Tuesday 24th May 2011 on Watch and at 6pm on Saturday 16th June 2012 on ITV1.

> Buy the Series 5 DVD on Amazon.

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