there's a disparity here i just don't understand

So in my free time today, between taking that modernist literature exam (don't ask) and studying for the exam tomorrow on youth and political culture in 1960s Europe, I've watched two episodes of the British sci-fi show "Primeval" (2007-present). Of course it's ridiculous, but it's entertaining in its own way.

Professor Nick Cutter (played by the suddenly sexy Scot Douglas Henshall) is the leader of a mismatch of experts. Don't actually know the term for his specialty, whether it's archaeology or paleontology or a combination of both plus something else. Anyway, he's got his right hand man (a Stuart Townsend lookalike/twin), who's probably just a more useful and less-wise-cracking sidekick than similar characters in other explorer narratives. Then there's a zookeeper whose expertise is reptiles. She comes in handy when dealing with dinosaurs. (Yeah, I know.) And then there's one of Cutter's students, who's a nerd and a conspiracy theorist.

In any case, "anomalies" keep popping up all over Britain, these portals that afford anyone curious enough to walk through them the ability to transgress time and space. They explain how dinosaurs, other prehistoric animals, and ones completely made up (such as giant spiders and centipedes) wander through suburbia or in the London tubeway system. And also where Cutter's wife, who he thought either went missing or died on an expedition, has been hanging out for eight years.

Watching this show, I am reminded of British and European commercials. This show, along with most of the commercials I have seen, must use so many more special effects than do their American counterparts. I think it's ironic considering British cinema is driven by realism (see anything by Loach, Leigh, or Davies for more information), by performances. And here we have special effects that belong in an American sci-fi blockbuster appearing in a British hour-long serial. Interesting, no?

More than this though are the commercials. Commercials in the U.S., if I remember correctly, do not have many special effects, CGI or otherwise. But they certainly do here. Case in point: an advert showing the effect of hitting a child at 40 mph graphically portrays what happens to the girl. It starts off with her sitting on the side of the road, bleeding from the ear, her limbs twisted. Then in voiceover she explains that she has a very slight chance of surviving the blow at this speed. Then she is suddenly lifted to the middle of the street, where it is clear that she has, instead, just been hit at 30 mph. For this reason, she has "a 90% chance of living." And it shows because she gasps for air this time round. "It's 30 for a reason" is the lesson to be (re)learned here. How graphic, eh? Whether or not it's a successful ad campaign is lost on me because I am never in the car.

The commercial for a plasma TV, expressing the wide range of colors that come in full brightness because of the TV's technology, sees a highrise building splashed over with paints of all colors. It's visually stunning, and I've never seen anything like it before, especially not in the U.S. So these companies must be spending a lot of money to reach the European market and entertaining their TV-watchers. They're just leaving the long-term entertaining up to Hollywood then, eh?