The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Throughout these series of programs I had the strangest feeling that I was watching episodes of Blue Peter (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051257/). I kept expecting Auntie Val Singleton to spring out from behind a tree advising you "not to try this at home".Having never been a David Jason fan I had a few qualms about the voice-over but agree with a previous contributor that the timbre of Jason's voice does not work very well for narration. (Sorry Del-boy.) Most of the budget of this production was obviously allocated to the CGI. The only "actor" who feigned any real interest was Marven with his matter-of-fact and, at times very relaxed, attitude about potentially risking his life among prehistoric carnivorous beasts - most of which would have seen him as a tasty morsel of protein to supplement their meagre diets.I admit that it must be difficult acting for Green-Screen but everyone else appeared to be either confused or displaying tongue-in-cheek humour about what was happening which didn't help with the credibility.Final analysis - fun for the kids to watch.

This is a great show for kids. They'll be sure to find it entertaining, and a lot of good information is given to them in a way that doesn't just ram it all down their throats straight from a book. Nigel's "mistakes" actually are a vehicle for giving that information, I believe, though, as I'm about to lay-out below, some of the mistakes are just plain ridiculous to make.To that end, for the grownups, there are a few plot-holes that can become a bit distracting. If Nigel and his crew can time-travel to an exact, specific time and place repeatedly, wouldn't it be better to go back in time first to just look and see what you have to deal with, film everything you see with a timer running, then go back to the present and figure out a strategy, and THEN go back to your scene a second time and catch the dinosaurs, already KNOWING where they'll be and what they'll do? They will arrive in the exact same circumstances you saw the first time, and do exactly the same things. This method will eliminate ALL of your guesswork. I mean...really!! If you can figure out a way to time-travel, shouldn't you have enough brains to do something like this to make your hunting and capturing easier? Other little things are annoying, too. No one would set up camp in the middle of an open space with T-rex presumed nearby! No one would walk around in a place he KNOWS to be a T-rex lair and be completely defenseless, with no weapons of any kind! No one, having just been chased by no less than THREE T-rex adults, would be "only slightly nervous and out of breath" as Nigel is! Yikes!! Most people would have had a full blown heart attack (I'm SURE I would have!), yet Nigel almost seemed to enjoy the romp...and then, later on, he goes blithely walking around in their lair, totally unarmed! He reacts in similar fashion on other episodes when he is dealing with dangerous bears, sabretooth cats, etc. That's just too much! In the scenario on the show, Nigel is deliberately going to get the T-rex just when they will be wiped out by the asteroid anyway, so he wouldn't need to worry about altering history and possibly changing the fate of the ecosystem. Therefore, he wouldn't have to scruple about killing them to save himself in an emergency (he could, as already noted, always bail out back to the present and then try again with a better plan, and they'd be alive again!). No one would cage the pair of T-rex in a wooden enclosure, especially when it is the flimsy set up one finds on the show!). No one would let a small herd of titanosaurs roam the entire park at will; not only is it dangerous, they'll eventually blunder into all of the buildings and wreck them, not to mention crash through the T-rex and sabretooth enclosures and inadvertently "liberate" these dangerous animals! No one would cavalierly wade through Carboniferous period swamps as carelessly as Nigel does. Even when he gets a bite to the leg, he's almost totally unconcerned about the bacteria in the bite that are completely different from present-day bacteria and TOTALLY foreign to our immune systems. Speaking of bacteria (and viruses), no one explains how the beasts brought back to the present can so successfully fight off the germs of our own day; they'd be as completely defenseless here as we should be in their time.Finally, how, exactly, does Nigel know the PRECISE day that the asteroid hit, ending the Cretaceous Period and wiping out the dinosaurs??? He couldn't possibly guess to within 10,000 years! The dating isn't anywhere near precise enough to travel to the very day such an event occurred! I could name a few more quibbles with the show, but you get the idea.Still, as I said, the show is a pretty good "adventure" for the kids, and it's fairly entertaining for those adults who don't want to think much while viewing. For the rest, it can also be entertaining, but not always in the ways the producers intended, I'm sure! ;-)

My whole family loved this series. My 8 year old daughter in particular; she has now told us that wants to be a vet *and* an archaeologist and "dig up bones like Nigel." It shows the fascination that this show holds for people; particularly children.Yes, the animals are CGI for the most part, with the odd bit of animatronics, but even for those of us who have seen movies like 'Jurassic Park' this still seems more realistic; particularly with Nigel discussing the various creatures he sees. His educational technique is very good, as he obviously teaches without people feeling they're being bored with facts and figures.We have the DVD now as well, which my daughter is in danger of wearing out. I only hope they make more of this brilliant show, as it was so good.

So I have read a few reviews, checked out some comments and have decided everyone else is wrong and no not what they talk about. OK, thats a bit much but I'll explain what I mean (And yes, everyone is entitled to their own opinion).First I acknowledge there are problems with the plot - he doesn't explain why he chooses the moment dinosaurs died to first travel back to in order to catch a T-Rex. He does constantly talk about running out of time, yet he can time travel repeatedly, but it doesn't effect my scoring because this show is made for kids.Unlike most dinosaur CGI shows that I have seen Prehistoric Park attempts to show Dinosaurs in a different light - they are not depicted as evil, it isn't all about blood a guts and it has the odd funny moments the whole family will laugh at.In my opinion the CGI was brilliant, I have seen dinosaurs I never even knew existed in this show and, in Australia at least, it was played on a main stream station allowing the educational sections to reach a lot more children then anything on at 6 pm on a weekend on ABC ever will.This show is fun, you feel for the dinosaurs and more importantly they make an effort to show the relation between todays animals and the dinosaurs throughout the ages. If your kid likes giant lizards, they will love this show. This is coming from a person who detests children's programs. It really is entertaining and educational, give it a try!