Primeval - foreword by Tim Haines & Adrian Hodges
Posted on February 6, 2007 - , Primeval, Tim Haines, Adrian Hodges
Primeval started life about five years ago, not long after we had worked together on Arthur Conan Doyle’s The LOST World.
The success of that film convinced us that there was a lot more to be done in the area where Television drama meets fantasy, a genre we both loved. From the outset, we knew we wanted this new idea to be set firmly in the modern world; the notion of confronting our fragile contemporary civilisation with creatures from the deep, mysterious past seemed irresistible.
As a society, our fascination with dinosaurs and the strange beasts that came before them remains as compelling as ever.
Anyone who has had to queue to see the dinosaur exhibits at the Natural History Museum during the school holidays will understand what we are talking about. Something about these unknowable creatures, in all their ferocity and strangeness, connects us to a vision of the early history of the world we find exciting, frightening and somehow oddly affecting.
Astonishing advances in computer animation enable us to recreate these extraordinary creatures in ways that would have been inconceivable only a few years ago.
For the first time since these beasts actually roamed the earth, it is possible to imagine and show something of their sheer size and impact, and in Primeval that is what we have set out to do. But at the same time we passionately believe that the best special effects in the world mean little unless they are coupled to an exciting and compelling human story. Our series is as much or more about the people who come into contact with our creatures as it is about the beasts themselves.
This is a story about all kinds of human emotions - grief, love, laughter, fear and courage - and each of our principal characters has a long journey to go on. For us, the drama always comes first and special effects are only a way to tell the story more effectively, not the reason for telling it in the first place.
This series, in essence, asks the questions - what would any of us do in the most extraordinary of circumstances? How would we behave if we met a dinosaur in the supermarket or the school playground? What would happen if humanity was suddenly confronted with its dark and terrifying past? In the face of unimaginable crisis, would we stand together or fall apart?
With Primeval our ambition was to answer some of these questions in the scariest, most thrilling, funny and exciting ways we could.
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This has been one of the best shows on ITV this year, its good to see a bit of behind the scenes