Commentators unassociated with the production team have also suggested that Primeval was partly inspired by series such as Doctor Who, Lost, Stargate and Quatermass. Other influences included Jurassic Park and King Kong. Another inspiration were fossil ghost lineages, which Haines imagined could be explained by animals "swapping times".
Among the inspirations for the idea were the old science fiction films of Ray Harryhausen, which Haines felt had a "certain charm". After the production of The Lost World, Haines came up with the idea of Primeval, though he at this point called it Cutter's Bestiary. The successes of his programmes allowed Haines to co-found his own high-end television production company in 2002, Impossible Pictures. According to Haines, the success of The Lost World showed that it was possible to take the technology of Walking with Dinosaurs and create "very entertaining Hollywood-esque stories". Although the BBC were receptive to the idea, they wanted a recognisable property rather than a new idea, leading Haines to produce The Lost World (2001), an adaptation of the Arthur Conan Doyle novel of the same name. While working on Walking with Dinosaurs, Haines came up with the idea of using the technology of the series to produce a science fiction drama. Walking with Dinosaurs was the first ever natural history series on dinosaurs to make use of extensive special effects to depict them as animals in their natural environments and was a massive success, becoming the most watched science programme in British television history. Tim Haines, who studied zoology and had a background in science journalism, made his first television breakthrough in the late 1990s when he as a television producer at the BBC envisioned and created the nature documentary series Walking with Dinosaurs (1999). A Canadian spinoff series, Primeval: New World, aired in 2013 but was cancelled after a single 13-episode season.
An American film adaptation was announced to be in production in 2009 but languished in development and was ultimately never made. The success of Primeval spawned an accompanying franchise of merchandise, including novels, games and toy lines. Though the fifth series was a success during its initial broadcast on the channel Watch in 2011, its disappointing ratings when it was broadcast on ITV the following year led to Primeval being cancelled again. Reception to the fourth series was mixed but the fifth series again garnered praise from critics. After a few months in hiatus the programme was brought back through a co-production deal with UKTV, allowing for the production of a fourth and fifth series. Despite maintaining good ratings, Primeval was cancelled by ITV following the third series due to financial issues. Though the second series met with a somewhat more lukewarm reception, Primeval's third series received high praise from critics as its strongest outing yet. Also successful with international audiences, Primeval overcame its early dismissals and became recognised by critics as something unique in its own right. Despite this, the first series of Primeval met with an enthusisatic response, becoming both a critical and an audience hit. Before its initial broadcast, many early commentators dismissed Primeval as a Doctor Who ripoff. Haines and Hodges then approached ITV, who were enthusiastic about the project. Originally intended as a production for the BBC, Primeval was ultimately turned down in 2005 after several years of concepting due to being deemed too similar to the revived Doctor Who by executives. The idea for Primeval had originally been devised by Haines in the early 2000s, in the aftermath of the production of Walking with Dinosaurs. It ran for five series, originally broadcast from 2007 to 2011, and remains fondly remembered as one of the greatest British science fiction series. Primeval was created by Tim Haines, who previously created the Walking with. Primeval follows a team of scientists tasked with investigating the appearance of temporal anomalies across the United Kingdom through which prehistoric and futuristic creatures enter the present, while simultaneously trying to stop the end of the world. Primeval is a British science-fiction television programme produced for ITV by Impossible Pictures.
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