Warden’s Watch: Primeval - Series Four, Episode Four

“Primeval”? Unbelievable! Very watchable but totally unrealistic. It’s not the idea of a horde of rampaging deadly therocephalians breaking through a time anomaly, while on the lookout for their next meal, which I have difficulty accepting but the reality in which these fantastical notions are set. In this week’s episode, similar to the one set in a shopping mall in the second series, a Saturday morning school detention is thrown into chaos by prehistoric events as indeed they would be if only the classroom antics were remotely plausible. The synopsis in my listings guide led me to expect to see “the pupils run riot”! Well, there were only three students being punished and they all seemed pretty well behaved to me. Dickheads but models of middleclass respectability! The two lads in the trio had made a nasty smell in the chemistry lab - probably something they ate at lunch! - so, instead of the teacher encouraging their obvious enthusiasm for the subject, the poor lads get a bollocking. These days, I don’t think teenagers would be detained for such a minor misdemeanour. And, if they were, they’d probably tell the teacher to fuck off rather than give up their free morning - assuming they attend school in the first place. Then there was the wee lassie completing the group, supposedly Miss unattainable! She was a proper little madam, snotty, antisocial with her iPod (why wasn’t it confiscated?) while unattractively dressed - mixing a short skirt with leggings. I can’t imagine what the boys saw in her!

I am sick of being told, about any series, that the latest season is darker than previous efforts. Still, it was certainly the case with the latest instalment of “Primeval” - so poorly lit I couldn’t see a thing! Seriously though, the darkness was laid on with a trowel, signposted in big black letters by the early demise of the supposed school princess, while bouncing up and down on a trampoline in the gym! Two series ago, Professor Cutter rescued a little girl who went through an anomaly after her dog. She was safely returned to her stepfather, their relationship miraculously restored, but, three years later, the little bitch in the latest adventure has to die. Yup, it sure is gloomier these days chasing dinosaurs. Hannah Spearritt’s character, Abby, has also become even more of a misery guts than she used to be. In series one, she used to prance around in her knickers, better dressed then than she is now! Give her some credit though, she has stayed with the show longer than Billie Piper stayed with “Doctor Who”. And, on the plus, there is a new girl working at the Anomaly Research Centre (ARC) who, I’m happy to report, does have a keen dress sense. Ruth Kearney plays operations controller Jess Parker who is more than a distraction from all the excesses of the CGI! Whether or not she would be so impractically dressed brings me neatly back to the question of credibility though I can’t have it both ways. Make up your own minds should you choose to watch the repeat tonight at 8pm on ITV2!