TIME travel is the order of the day on our screens at the moment, with the return of the celebrated Life On Mars (BBC1) and ITV1's new Saturday night drama Primeval.
Tyler and Hunt were well and truly back with this week's episode - vintage Gene rants and the comedy opening with the kidnap of safe-cracker Dickie Fingers.
After the more tentative tone of the opening episode, it was good to see our heroes back in form, as they dealt with the revelation that Hunt's mentor, Superintendent Harry Woolf, was corrupt and Sam came face to face with his future superior officer, Glenn Fletcher, the first black man to join the seventies team of detectives.
Life On Mars is wonderful entertainment and, if it doesn't win a flurry of awards this year, there's no justice in the world.
Meanwhile supermarket car park rage took on a new meaning in the first episode of ITV1's Saturday night drama Primeval, as a dinosaur ran riot through the trolleys. The prehistoric beast had taken advantage of a tear in the space-time continuum' (where have we heard that before?) to visit the present day - and pop down to Asda, of course!
His obvious anger at not being able to find his favourite mammoth burgers on its shelves no doubt led to his rampage into the New Forest.
By the second episode another tear' had led to enormous spiders and a giant centipede from an even earlier prehistoric age invading the Underground.
The series hero is evolutionary scientist Nick Cutter (Douglas Henshall), who is haunted by the disappearance of his scientist wife Helen in mysterious circumstances eight years earlier. During the first episode, he discovered that she had also found herself on the wrong side of one of the tears', with evidence of her presence in Jurassic England.
Nick's research assistant Stephen Hart (James Murray) is happy to hunt monsters, probably seeing it as a way to attract the ladies. His potential love interest is perky zoologist Abbey Maitland (former pop singer Hannah Spearritt), who has a special interest in lizards. This is a good thing, as a cute prehistoric flying reptile (Rex) has latched on to the petite blonde, spurning the chance to return to its own world.
In all science-based dramas there has to be a geek, and Connor Temple (Andrew Lee-Potts) duly obliges in this instance.
Despite the obvious attractions of Doctor Who style sci-fi, it's too early yet to judge whether this series will stand the test of time.
