Instead of the apparently extinct Jones, the BBCs' Primeval features actually extinct animals, brought to the present day via cracks in time. The cracks drift from prehistoric era to prehistoric era, delivering dinosaurs, giant spiders and even dodo birds upon an unsuspecting populace. Luckily, we live in an age of science, and a ragtag team made up of a Scottish professor, his assistant/bodyguard, his geeky student and a pixyish herpetologist is able to get on board early and score itself the government-sponsored gig of official rift task force. When the guys with guns can't get the job done, the bookworms step in and take out the chronologically displaced trash. But there's a twist -- the professor's wife, who went missing seven years ago, has apparently been living on the other side of the rifts since then, and not only knows them like the back of her hand, but may know where they came from! Also, the pixyish herpetologist may have once been in an international pop group.

At first glance, the plot structure is pretty much freak-of-the-week, but with only six episodes to a season (this weekend's is the fourth episode of the first season), the overarching storyline moves along pretty rapidly. And if the idea of watching some dumb ol' dinosaurs week after week has you bored already, I should mention that the rifts reach forward in time, too, which means that some scary-ass future creatures will be coming through in upcoming episodes. Also, it's hard to get bored when the aforementioned pixyish herpetologist walks around in her underwear in pretty much every episode. If that doesn't make you want to buy all of the action figures, I don't know what will.