This Great Dinosaur Series With 5 Seasons Is The Perfect Show To Watch While You Wait For Jurassic World 4

The British TV show Primeval might not have had the budget of the Jurassic Park franchise, but it is the perfect show to watch while you are waiting for Jurassic World 4. The upcoming movie will introduce an entirely new world without bringing back the main characters from the rebooted Jurassic Park series. Jurassic World 4's cast and setting means the franchise's fan-favorite characters are unlikely to appear. Still, it offers a lot of potential to take the dinosaur-based series in a new direction, featuring dinosaurs that have not been in a Jurassic Park movie yet, or even other prehistoric creatures.

It may be surprising that the Jurassic Park franchise has featured a relatively limited number of dinosaurs and created new animals rather than exploring the real prehistoric world. The next Jurassic World movie could take inspiration from Primeval, which is one of the best TV shows about dinosaurs to have been made. Primeval includes plenty of dinosaurs but also features some of the most beloved (and feared) animals from prehistoric eras. The show is a fantastic low-budget fantasy TV show, but mixes sci-fi with its fantasy elements, giving Jurassic World fans a dinosaur fix without copying the movie series.

Primeval Finds A Different Way To Bring Dinosaurs Into The Present Day World

Like Jurassic Park, The Dinosaurs In Primeval Are Exaggerated But Have A Scientific Basis

While the Jurassic Park and rebooted Jurassic World series mostly center around the titular theme park, Primeval centers on a team of scientists who are investigating something they are calling "anomalies" that are appearing around the United Kingdom. These anomalies are gateways through which various prehistoric creatures are entering the present-day world and causing chaos. Primeval generally follows the popular "monster of the week" format, introducing a new creature and situation in each episode. This, combined with the show's time travel aspect, has drawn more comparisons to Doctor Who than to Jurassic Park.

Steven Spielberg wanted to make Jurassic Park feel as real as possible, so the dinosaurs were mostly accurate for the time. Primeval takes a similar approach, being created by the team behind the documentary series Walking with Dinosaurs, which is a great animated dinosaur show with a factual basis. Still, its producer, Tim Haines, was known to take more creative liberties with Primeval, embracing its place in the sci-fi genre and even including imagined futuristic dinosaurs. Primeval changes the behavior of some of its creatures, and both Primeval and the Jurassic World franchise have exaggerated the size of their dinosaurs.

Primeval Adds 1 Long-Requested Element All Jurassic World Movies Are Missing

The Jurassic World Movies Could Start To Include Creatures Like The Ones In Primeval

Though Jurassic Park III introduced Pterodactyls, and Jurassic World's most iconic scene featured a Mosasaur, one surprising aspect of the franchise is that it has solely focused on dinosaurs. If the movies have one criticism, it is this lack of other prehistoric creatures. While dinosaurs are central to the Jurassic Park franchise, Primeval is much more creative with its creatures. Primeval features sabertooth tigers, marine reptiles, giant prehistoric insects, arthropods, and even a futuristic fungus in season 3. The show even embraces its horror potential in the second episode when a colony of giant spiders entered the anomaly.

Primeval is a great British sci-fi show, and therefore extremely different from the Jurassic World movie franchise. That said, while Jurassic World 4 looks unlikely to include Primeval's time travel element, it should have more prehistoric creatures. Animals like wooly mammoths and sabertooth tigers are so significant in history that failing to include them in Jurassic World 4 might be a mistake after so many movies have ignored them. The Jurassic World team may be trying to avoid comparisons to Ice Age, which centers on other prehistoric creatures rather than dinosaurs, but Primeval proved that it can be done.

Primeval's Canadian Spin-Off Is Short-Lived (But Is Still Worth Watching)

Primeval Deserves An Updated Remake

The British series lasted for five seasons and has a 77% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes. When its cancelation was announced, the team wrapped up the story, so viewers weren't left with another fantasy show that ended on a cliffhanger. Granted, Primeval left a legacy, with a Canadian spin-off airing in 2012. Primeval: New World takes the original Primeval concept and sets it in Canada, focusing on a team of animal experts. Though the spin-off was canceled after one season, it is worth watching, with a similar tone to Primeval, with Andrew Lee-Potts reprising his role as Connor.

Primeval has an exciting plot, interesting characters, and a new approach to bringing a prehistoric world into the modern day. However, while it is one of the best sci-fi shows of the 2000s, Primeval's special effects have aged terribly, especially when it comes to the dinosaurs. This does not make the show any less enjoyable to watch, but it is obvious that Primeval is not a modern show. With the original Jurassic Park movie aging so well and Jurassic World 4 on the horizon, it is about time that attention was paid to Primeval, as it deserves a reboot to really bring its non-dinosaur creatures to life.