Abby Maitland from Primeval
Abby Sarah Maitland is played by Hannah Spearritt.
ITV's official site says that while Abby has arachnophobia she developed a love of reptiles when her parents took her on holiday to the Galapagos Islands as a child and has had a love affair with lizards ever since. Although she started university she later left after only one term when she became a zookeeper. Always fit and athletic, her hobbies include gymnastics, Ashtanga yoga, karate, kick boxing, swimming and diving. She keeps gym equipment in her flat. Actress Hannah Spearritt also stated that Abby was abused as a child. In Series 1 she seemed to be attracted to Stephen Hart, but in the second season she seems to be falling in love with Connor Temple.
She openly admits to falling in love with the wrong type of men - moody and dangerous. She also appears to have her feelings hurt easily but struggles to remain upbeat and positive. She can also be remarkably deceitful in order to get her own way as she lies to the government and to her team mates about her experiences with spiders so they will take her with them. She would not tell anyone that Rex came back through the anomaly with Nick Cutter.
She is a zookeeper who first appears in the series when a small boy called Ben who alerts the zoo she works at about an escaped lizard he misidentifies as a modern day lizard named Draco volans. She later angers Cutter when she and Connor go off to find an anomaly by themselves but is allowed to stay because he admits he needs her skills. She later allows Connor to move into her flat on a purely platonic basis. She remains as the team lab assistant and sidekick up until episode 1.4 when she is almost contaminated by a deadly parasite by a student friend of work/flatmate Connor Temple.
Her love/hate relationship with Connor reaches a peak in episode 1.5 when she is enraged that he let everyone know that she's been keeping Rex in secret but later says that if he makes her breakfast on the weekends and does the washing up for a month then he can stay. She admits that this compromise is really because she actually likes having him around. Connor hugs her, prompting Abby to say she likes having him around as a friend, hinting that she is beginning to fall in love with him. How Abby has been changed by the alterations in the timeline is unknown. Connor now has a girlfriend in this new timeline but how this affects their relationship is unknown. Connor's girlfriend, much to Abby's horror, hates lizards, and the two do not get along. Also, her crush on Stephen, and their closeness because of it, seems to have completely disappeared in the second season.
In episode 2.1, Abby and Connor seem to have a much closer relationship than they did previously. This comes to the extent that Abby pays for Connor's slushie and lets Connor use her gun, even though there is a pack of Deinonychus on the loose. Abby has a much better flat in the second series, and the reptile species that she keeps includes Rex the Coelurosauravus, a corn snake, a milk snake, leopard geckos, bearded dragons and a boa constrictor. In episode 2.2, Abby is quietly jealous of Caroline Steel who Connor seems to have a relationship with. It is clear that Abby disapproves however, as she shows no sympathy when Connor has to leave for work or when he accidentally washes his number off. In episode 2.4, Abby is attacked by a futuristic Mer, and dragged through an anomaly to the future. Connor runs through, despite being injured, alone to help her, and tries to pull her over an overhang, and as he appears to be able to get her over, a massive Mer looms over them, preparing to kill them. Abby begs him to let her go and escape, but he refuses, finally bursting out, 'I can't! I love you!' She would later confront him about the matter but at this point Caroline Steel comes for her date with Connor. Ironically, at one point Abby defeats a Mer using a kickboxing move that Caroline showed her, thus Caroline probably indirectly and unknowingly saved Abby's life.
In the Series 2 finale, Abby is captured with the rest of the team and held captive. When Caroline is thrown into the cell with Connor and Abby, the two girls fight, punching and kicking each other. Eventually Abby slams Caroline against a wall, but Caroline uses her superior strength to pin Abby down. Abby bites her and she lets go, and the two continue to grapple briefly, much to Connor's shock and Leek's amusement. Connor succeeds in breaking up the fight but when Caroline thanks him, he says "I didn't do it for you" and seems to remain close to Abby throughout the episode. Surprisingly, she later forgives Caroline and even saves her life when they are kept in a room with a smilodon. Abby splits off from the group as a distraction, and inadvertently turns off the power system and releases the creatures. Rex is shot in the episode, and Abby looks after him (but not before thanking Caroline for saving him). At the end of the episode, Abby and the rest of the team are at Stephen's funeral, where Abby lays flowers for him. As they leave, Abby reaches to hold Connor's hand, but the team get called out to an anomaly.
In series 3, she and Connor continued to grow closer, though they were reluctant to do anything about their attraction. In episode 3.4 she is revealed to have a brother, Jack, who stays with her and forces Connor to move out temporarily. During episode 3.8 Abby desperately went through an anomaly to rescue Jack after he went through accidentally, risking her own life and the others because she didn't want to lose him. At the end of the episode she and Connor kissed after Jack admitted to her that Connor had helped him get Rex back and losing him in a poker game, thankful that he hadn't made Jack look bad. At the start of episode 3.9, Abby visits Connor and explains that she does not want things to be 'weird' between them, making their relationship indefinite. However when the pair are trapped in the Cretaceous while chasing Helen with new team leader Danny Quinn, she helps him to relax, and agrees to let him move back into her flat once they return home.
The episode 4.1, Connor and Abby have been living in the Cretaceous period for a year and by this time, Abby had lost all faith in getting back to the present. However, after finding an anomaly device they do manage to get back to the present, and both are told by the ARC that they are fired, due to new regulations stating that employees must be from a military/police background; although Lester later reinstates them in episode 4.2. The opening episodes also show that Connor and Abby are a couple, this is shown by the two kissing at the end of 4.1, and Abby telling Duncan that she is Connor's girlfriend. However their relationship becomes strained as they readjust to their jobs, particularly when Connor doesn't stay to support her as she tries to stop Philip Burton from killing the Rex and the other creatures in the ARC in episode 4.4, and when he blurts out about the possibility of getting married in episode 4.6.
In the fifth series she learned of Matt's mission and lent her help, though her relationship with Connor became strained as she couldn't tell him why she was trying to stop his obsessive work for Philip. In episode 5.3 she wasn't happy when Connor's new assistant April Leonard suggested that she was nothing but a distraction for him, and this emboldened her to copy Connor's hard drive, despite refusing Matt's earlier requests. When he caught her near his lab she tried to appeal to him by revealing Helen and Philip's association, though his apparent knowledge made him adamant she only wanted him away from Philip, creating further tension between them. She was furious at him when he opened his own anomaly in the ARC in episode 5.4, and set out to find Rex when he was loose in the ARC with an imminent gamma ray to kill a swarm of future beetles. In episode 5.5 she rescued Connor from a Kaprosuchus after he had been abandoned by Philip, and the two made up as Connor had realised he should have trusted Abby over Philip. At the New Dawn facility she threatened April with her EMD, and tried to go after Connor when he was pulled through the anomaly as it opened. In the series finale she and Matt go to rescue him from a pack of mutated Future Predators, and encourages Connor to return when he gives up hope, whispering something in his ear. After returning she comes up with a plan to paralyse the Predators in the ARC by using high frequency sounds, and once the crisis is over she asks Connor to marry her (what she told him in the future), which he agreed to.
Primeval
Does anyone have a really big slipper? [Primeval 1.2] 2007
