jooles34 | Primeval season five preview screening

Today I was stupidly lucky enough to go to the Primeval series 5 preview screening at London Zoo with

blu04 . This is a write up of the day without any spoilers for the episode, but a metric fuckton of pictures and blathering.

So, here’s what happened:

My flatmate, L, won the tickets through the Facebook competition and was going to go with her girlf (and my mate) blu. But, circumstances beyond anyone’s control conspired against her and she couldn’t go. So she very kindly gave her place to me. This was horribly bittersweet as I was obviously made up to be able to attend, but I am still absolutely gutted for her.

So that’s the backstory, here’s the main event which contains scenes of an overexcited fangirl nature.

We arrived at the zoo and were shown where to go. Immediately we were given free tea and coffee which made us all happy and two of us a little jittery as we had already had a lot of coffee (I was up at 6.30. On a Sunday. Coffee was the only way I was getting through.) There were also free pastries. So far the whole affair was getting off to a stirling start.

It didn’t take us long to realise that pretty much everyone else there was there with small children…Oh well. We took our seats and for the screening and after a while Andrew-Lee Potts and Hannah Spearritt came in and were introduced to everyone. Tims Haines and Bradley were also in the crowd.

(Although I hadn’t really expected him to be, I will admit to being a little disappointed that Ben Miller wasn’t there. There was also disappointment that Ben Mansfield and his chest possum weren’t in attendance. Although it was probably for the best in many ways as none of us could promise that we would have been able to behave in a terribly ladylike fashion if he had have been. And if Mr Miller had been there I would have been a drooling mess, so…)

I won’t say anything about the episode to avoid any spoilers, other than to say I really enjoyed it; I thought it was a cracking episode. To my mind it was def better than the season 4 opener. Fred is going to do a post with a bit more detail including info gleaned from various sources, so if you want spoilers, look out for that!

After the screening Hannah and Andrew both did signings at the back of the room. Fred, Blu and I were all terribly well behaved and we did let all the children go in front of us. We had picked up some presspacks each (more of a souvenir giveaway than a press pack really) and we each got them signed. We also got one signed for L as she couldn’t be there in person. (Incidentally, the presspack is full of spoilers so I haven’t actually been able to read the damn thing yet and won’t be able to for ages, but it does have a cool pop-up page in the middle.)

Andrew and Hannah were both absolutely lovely; as lovely as they always appear in interviews. They were fantastic talking to the kids and didn’t seem to mind us adult (still being well behaved honest) fangirls either. They were both smiley, friendly and chatty and Hannah is even more pretty in real life than on TV. Blu claims she “accidentally” put her hand on Andrew’s knee, but I think we all know better. And I may have taken advantage of the photo to put my arm around Andrew. And Hannah. Fred is more restrained in the photo-as-excuse-for-touching thing than Blu and I.

Here are some pics of that bit:

As we were leaving us eagle eyed Denialists realised that all the promo materials were still around including stand-up cards of the characters (except Lester, grrrrr). So we very politely asked if we could take them as pretty much everyone else had already left. We were told no problem, and the nice lady went off to fetch a couple for us. Fred moved quicker than I believed humanly possible when the one of Becker came within reach. Blu had been on her own mission and secured some more to give L. I on the other hand decided to chance my luck and asked if I could have the slightly larger group shot wall picture that had been in the hallway. The woman looked undecided for a moment, then shrugged and just said, “don’t tell them I said so.” I didn’t need telling twice and grabbed it. There were also some leftover presspacks and we were told to take some extras if we wanted. Never ones to turn down a free anything we decided we did want and took a few. You are likely to hear more about them another time.

Pics of stand ups, group thingy and presspack that isn’t a presspack:

We then mooched outside and found a T-Rex not being terribly frightening:

We then found a nice information man and asked him to point us in the direction of the raccoons as a Denial trip to a zoo clearly had to include a visit to the Little Masters. But, shock horror, London Zoo have no raccoons. The man tried to fob us off with fake raccoons but we were having none of it. You will be equally sad to hear that they have no possums. Another Denial dream dashed. However, we did get to see one of Angela’s dance troop. She was apparently on a break…

Thus animaly sated we wandered in search of processed pig products and one quite manky hot-dog later spotted Andrew and Hannah standing near to where we were sitting. There remained one final thing to do. I had taken the Connor hat (story here if you want a re-cap) with me and it was an opportunity I couldn’t not take.

With profuse apologies for bothering them again I explained how I had come about the hat and asked him if he recognised it. He nodded straight away and said he did, and that although it had not made it into an episode it had been part of his wardrobe. I then asked if I could get a picture of him wearing it and it led to this:

It is a mild understatement to say that it made me a little happy. Look at the awesome Connor face he pulled for it too. And with much thanking of him we left them again.

And decided that what we clearly needed was more tea and coffee…

So, we headed into the café and as we were queuing a voice pipes up behind us “Hello again” and Andrew was standing there. He made a joke about how he was now stalking us and we had a little chat with him while the café lady was taking a brilliantly long time to make our orders for us. (Never been so pleased for slow service). Fred had a Denial badge in her purse and gave it to him and we explained the basic principals of Denial. His immediate response was “Captain Ryan!” which made everyone happy. Some of the things that were said in the conversation are potentially spoilery so I will leave those to Fred’s post. However Fred had also gleaned from him earlier that he has been doing some filming for Doc Martin so it looks like will have some non-Primeval screen time from him soon too.

As we went to sit and drink our teas and coffees the reverse stalking continued and they ended up near us. So Fred gave Hannah a Denial badge too. The love is spread.

And that was it. It was a lovely day and I’m very grateful to L for giving me the opportunity to go; just very sad that it had to be at her expense.

Oh and sorry to anyone who follows me on twitter for totally spamming your feed with my over excitement through out the day…