Canadian Primeval Spin-Off To Work Like CSI

Show’s creator talks The New World

With Primeval ’s last two seasons undoubtedly the show’s finest, we were rather excited to learn that a “darker and scarier” Canadian Primeval spin-off is in development. But how will it fit in with the UK show’s mythology?

“It’s a spin-off,” explains Primeval co-creator Tim Haines, when we catch up with him to talk about new Sky1 show Sinbad (which you can read about in the next issue of SFX , on sale 16 November). “Imagine CSI – so the people in Miami do it, the people in New York do it. Essentially anomalies start appearing on the Northern latitudes, and they’ve got to cope with it. And there is a little bit of crossover in the first episode, and then we’ll see how it goes after that. Mostly they’ll be getting on with it themselves.”

Does that mean we’ll see characters from the UK show popping up? “Possibly,” says Haines. “We’ve only got one at the moment – we haven’t worked that out.”

Haines says that filming is set to take place next year, but that the Impossible Pictures team are “very keen to start the writers’ room soon. It will be produced in Vancouver, and it will be made very much under the North American system. It’ll be very interesting to see how that works.”

It seems that the TV spin-off doesn’t mean the end of the Primeval movie adaptation , either. “Obviously movies do their own kind of thing, but Jeff Pinkner [of Fringe fame] is the writer, and as far as I know he’s redrafting.”