| The Monster Bunch
Something is stirring at the British Museum. In a storeroom piled high with dusty relics, an ancient Egyptian statue towers over camera crew. Without warning, the doors burst open and Professor Nick Cutter thunders passed us, one hand grabbing a pistol. We’re on location with the crew of ITV1’s time-travel drama Primeval which returns to our screens this week for a third series. Now firmly established as one of the channel’s most popular shows, the new series features a bumper run of 10 episodes, a new-look team and some major shocks for the core characters. It also features some pretty nifty locations. ‘Filming in the British Museum is a real coup,’ grins Douglas Henshall aka team leader Nick Cutter, on a break from hunting an Egyptian crocodile demon which is rampaging around the museum. ‘Running around at night, when the place was in total lockdown, was fantastic, though we did have to be careful with the artefacts.’ The series picks up with the team still in mourning for their colleague Stephen Hart, who sacrificed himself to save Cutter in their confrontation with the evil scientist Oliver Leek and Cutter’s unhinged ex-wife Helen. Now Cutter must get his team to focus once more on their investigation into the mysterious portals –known as anomalies – which allow prehistoric and futuristic creatures to enter present day Britain. ‘There’s a real end-of-the-world feeling to this series,’ says Henshall. ‘Cutter is obviously devastated by Stephen’s death, and he’s becoming quite fatalistic about things now, everything could go horribly wrong.’ Luckily Cutter’s team finds itself on the verge of a real breakthrough when it comes across a piece of equipment from the future that becomes known as the Artefact. ‘I’m not revealing what it does, but it has something to do with the anomalies, the history of the world and the answer to everything,’ explains Henshall. ‘It’s a pretty big storyline.’ Joining the team in this week’s opener is a new head of security, Captain Becker (newcomer Ben Mansfield), and Egyptologist Dr Sarah Page (Footballer’s wife actress Laila Rouass). Becker provides military back-up whilst Page’s expertise proves valuable in their search for the truth. Elsewhere, their boss James Lester (Ben Miller) comes up against devious Whitehall official Christine Johnson (played by Ben Miller’s real-life wife, Belinda Stewart-Wilson), while episode two sees the introduction of maverick policeman Danny Quinn played by Jason Flemyng. As for the monsters in this new series, expect to see a raft of new creations loosely drawn from the pages of prehistory and legend, including the Giganotosaurus, a 40ft lizard which wreaks havoc at an airfield, and the winged Dracorex, which is pursued by a medieval night who believes the dinosaur is a dragon. Perhaps the most gripping storyline, however, is a violent showdown with the scheming Helen, an event that has a major impact on the team. As the death of lab technician proved Stephen proved last year, says Henshall, no character is indestructible. ‘We are all fallible. People have been dying since series one and the body count is going to get even higher. Nobody is safe on this show.’ Ollie Grant - TV and Satellite Week 28 March – 3 April 2009 |