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In bringing across the idea that Connor (Andrew-Lee Potts) and Abby (Hannah Spearritt) have been marooned in the Cretaceous for a year and, now that they've unexpectedly found their way back, are outsiders at an Anomaly Research Center that's moved on without them, Primeval's season 4 premiere (January 1, 2011 on BBC America) has a huge advantage. Apart from Ben Miller (Sir James Lester), Potts and Spearritt are the only stars left from the show's original 2007 cast.

Focusing the first few episodes on Connor and Abby's difficult return is a tremendously effective means of reintroducing the reinvented series.

The Real Stars

One might say that Primeval's real stars are the monsters, and the need for funding that postponed this fourth season and drove the creation of a new partnership of backers was primarily to ensure that the dinosaurs and other time-displaced creatures were some of the most effectively realized CGI on television. It would have been unspeakably disappointing if Primeval had returned after all this turbulence, only to have it turn out that the monsters are naff. Fortunately this is not the case.

The season 4 premiere has particularly strong opportunities, dealing for a considerable chunk of the story with Connor and Abby's furtive existence in a past full of predators. While they struggle with every castaway's anguish -- whether to retain hope for getting back home or concentrate on survival -- they face not only Primeval's version of a raptor but a giant spinosaurus as well: the largest known carnivorous dinosaur, and ill-tempered toward interlopers in territory it's claimed as well.

The raptor, the spinosaurus, and the fight between them are very well done -- especially as the spinosaurus becomes injured by the raptor's attack.

In these scenes we again benefit from Potts and Spearritt's long tenure with the program: they have an easy familiarity with each other that translates in spades onto the screen. Time has helped Potts produce a revised version of Connor, as well: he's still in many ways the hapless, gangly college student who barged into Professor Cutter's office four years ago, but he's also more: more experienced, more energized, and more dedicated than ever.

The New Guys

Primeval boasts three new stars this season. The highest-profiled actor is also stuck with the most thankless character: Alexander Siddig (is it still necessary to put Deep Space 9 after his name?) has been brought in to play the genial Philip Burton, a massively rich inventor/businessman accepted by the government as an investor in the ARC, creating a joint private/public partnership. This makes sense in-universe (all this dinosaur-chasing weapons and tech would have become too expensive for the cash-strapped British government, especially after the ARC's recent failures), and it wryly mirrors the show's funding drama.

But nothing has been said about what Burton's supposed to be getting out of it. What's the profit angle for his participation? Research? Patents? Who knows? All we're left to speculate on is that he's obviously around to be obstructive (and, in the process, push Ben Miller's Lester further away from the cross bureaucrat he started out as), and that he obviously has a secret agenda. Fine. But what's his nonsecret agenda? Poor Alexander Siddig is in danger of becoming a sort of go-to for sketchily drawn manipulators; he plays his part well, of course, what there is of it, but can't we have more from him than mechanical plot obstruction? Fortunately one senses that considerable backstory material is being left in reserve, partly to highlight Connor and Abby's intrusion onto an existing scene; hopefully this will, as it emerges, flesh out Philip Burton and his role in the larger scheme of things.

Leaders and Secrets

With Danny Quinn (Jason Flemyng) still trapped in the past (but, sources say, slated to resurface during season 4), the new action star of the series is soft-spoken Irish actor Ciarán McMenamin, who plays team leader Matt Anderson. It's an interesting choice. Matt is now the show's fourth team leader: Professor Nick Cutter (Douglas Henshall), the original center of the program, was killed off early in season 3, briefly replaced by government liaison Jenny Lewis (Lucy Brown, also due to recur, we're told), then by the ex-cop Quinn for the balance of the season.

Matt's appointment both reflects and undercuts the new policy that ARC field operatives must now be military or ex-military, so they're better trained for the perils they face: a stark and believable evolution from Cutter's all-amateur team. Matt is an ex-soldier as well as a zoologist, and McMenamin plays him as solid, instinctive, and reliable; he gains loyalty through trust rather than ordering people about or charging heedlessly into the fray.

Matt has a secret agenda as well: the first two episodes show him meeting secretly with a mysterious figure (Gideon, played by Anton Lesser) as a part of a vague surveillance of Connor and the other members of the ARC team because one of them is important in some way for some reason. Once again, a lot is obviously being held in reserve, but as with Burton's obstruction these intimations of conspiracy feel inert and shapeless. Contrast the early appearances of Helen Cutter (Juliet Aubrey) in season 1: those were cryptic too, but immensely more menacing -- and engrossing.

Still Compulsive Stuff

Primeval was once about an ad-hoc team of strangers barely keeping up with randomly appearing anomaly-gateways and malign conspiracies to take advantage of them; now the ARC is a bustling enterprise that forms a sophisticated and seasoned front-line response to incursions from what are essentially other worlds. The show faces the challenge of stepping up in the same way its characters have: it can think bigger than the monster of the week and insidious nemeses, and needs to. Primeval has developed some great characters over the years, and is working on fleshing out some more: alongside Matt and Burton there's the new operations woman, Jess (Ruth Kearney), who has potential despite being a little too TV-perky, and Captain Becker (Ben Mansfield) is suddenly finding himself with more dialog than he's ever had before.

Connor and Abby got to where they are as characters because the show has generally been pretty good about not stunting the growth even of a clown like Connor, who might have remained pure comic relief foor four years, or Abby, who might have just stayed the girl with the pet lizard. Primeval will still be about the excitement of the week that comes from whatever dangers the next anomaly brings; but for me the most satisfying part of the season premiere was the very last shot, with Connor and Abby, after a year of hunting and being hunted in the distant past, standing on an apartment balcony looking out over the rooftops of London, a little unnerved that this jungle they've returned to could be so familiar and so strange at the same time.