We begin eight years ago. At night. When Asda is closed. Inside the supermarket, a cleaner washes the floor. Outside, a woman comes running through the darkened car park, terrified. She batters on Asda's window, trying to attract the cleaner's attention. But he's wearing headphones. Damn your music, Asda cleaner! Look around! But, suddenly, the air is booming. Something is after her. It's in Asda's car park! It's coming!

She runs into the night, the Something thundering close behind. Out in Asda's car park, shopping trolleys are tossed in the air. What is it? What unimaginable monster is chasing her? What can it be? What?

Well, it's a big CGI dinosaur thing. And we know this because, before any of this exciting Asda's car-park-after-dark stuff, the first shot in Primeval is of the big CGI dinosaur thing that's chasing this woman. The very, very first shot.

This says a lot about how Primeval will go. It says the people behind this programme are not interested in suspense. They are not interested in using atmosphere to suck you in. They are not interested in the tease of a slow drip-drip of implication followed by a grand, postponed reveal. What they are interested in is big CGI dinosaur things. Specifically, how to get them on-screen as quickly as possible. And the way to get them on-screen as quickly as possible is to put one on-screen right away. There's no arguing with that logic.

A six-part TV series cannot live by big CGI dinosaur things alone, however, and so the writers have a story, adapted from the old Chewits adverts. Dinosaurs from dinosaur-time are rampaging through the present day, blundering into our era via rips in time, cosmic holes like the stargates in Stargate, but not so much that anyone will sue.

While the authorities shake their heads, a maverick scientist, Professor Nick Cutter (Douglas Henshall), assembles a maverick young team with good jackets to investigate. Nick is driven by a secret wound. Eight years ago, his wife went missing, near Asda's car park. When he sees dinosaurs and rips in time, he knows where she's gone. This isn't just temporal anomalies and dinosaur invasion. This is personal.

Primeval is primordially bad. The kind of programme where, "Professor, the compass is going haywire," is the most believable thing anyone says. It is ITV's attempt at a Doctor Who. Unfortunately, they have been studying the newly rubbish Doctor Who - exemplified by last year's atrocious Christmas Special - and have made Torchwood for tweenies.

And yet, there is something about Primeval. It's not that it's so bad it's good. More that it's so bad that, as you watch the cast struggle to remain straight-faced, you find yourself rooting for them to make it. And the CGI dinosaur things are cute. Especially the little one.

It has been three years since Louis Theroux made a documentary for the BBC which, given the rate celebrities are rising and crashing now, qualifies him as a creature from another age himself. With the current casino nonsense Gambling In Las Vegas, the first in an occasional series of new films, could be viewed as calculatedly timely, but the best thing about it is how it wraps you in the reassuring feeling nothing has changed. Louis and his cameraman go to Vegas where, just by tagging along behind gamblers and being the questioning, cannily blank sponge he is so good at being - a persona like a three-year-old Rain Man - he captures a slightly skewed, oddly clear new perspective on gambling, and the town's soulless surrealism.

As ever, it's the choice of characters that is crucial, although I suspect that simply by focusing on them and not blinking, Theroux's style would make anyone weirdly interesting. My favourite person is the old lady with bug sunglasses and a faint Bronx cheer of a voice, Dr Martha, who has lost $4 million in the Hilton's slots in recent years. ("It's my second home.") But my favourite moment is the hard, black, thousand-yard look in the eyes of a previously bluff and blustering young gambler when Louis catches up with him following a 24-hour stretch on the Strip, during which he's lost $1000 per hour, and asks: "Have you been having a wonderful time?"