There’s something about the idea of total and complete break down of society and the economical fallout that fascinates the hell out of me, I don’t know why but I think it has something to do with how it’s a very real possibility. We’ve seen rebellions and riots from younger people back when the London riots happened and just this past year with the Black Lives Matter protests. But what fascinates me the most is the possibility of social and economic collapse happening due to a gobal pandemic, something that was raging, and still is, while we had those BLM protesta last year and just this year we had an insurrection by Americans on American soil when Trump rallied his supporters to march on the capital building.
With Covid-19 currently happening around the world, it may seem a little dark but I found myself watching a lot of pandemic films, from zombies to wasteland action to What If? Youtube documentaries. I suppose its a little bit dark and a bit sick to be watching these kind of films and TV shows during something so massive as the Covid pandemic but, in a weird way, I find it rather cathartic. Yes what’s happening now is horrible and at the start of the pandemic there were so many deaths but this virus has a 99% survival rate according to news outlets and scientific reports on the virus.
But, and this is the big question, what if, the virus had a 99% death rate?
That's the question the BBC tried to answer back in 1975 with their incredibly ambitious science fiction, post-apocalyptic series, Survivors. A show as relevant now as an actual possibility than as a fantasy back in 1975. Survivors is one of the best examples of this kind of genre, sure it’s very much a product of its time with it’s pastoral dresses, flared trousers, big collars and flat caps and it’s somewhat anti-feminist attitudes towards women, something that wouldn’t fly if made today, however, Survivors poses questions, legitimate questions on survival and how and what would we do if there were no cars, no factories, no supermarkets and no electricity? What about no government, no police, no military, no doctors? How would people organize? The ideas of self sufficiency, you grow what you eat, drink what you milk, skills you’d need from making tools to mending clothes, learning to ride a horse, treating diseases etc etc. Survivors, while obviously a fantasy in 1975, posed these questions which, up until March last year were somewhat irrelevant but soon had people thinking.
Well over the course of 38 episodes across 3 series, Survivors tried to answer these questions with all the drama and grit the BBC could afford in the mid 70s.
Like I previously stated, these questions and the whole show, seem to be more relevant now, than perhaps back then considering we’re all going through this pandemic together.
However relevant the show is now, it’s still meant as entertainment and as a reviewer of films and television, I have just rewatched the entire series from the very first episode to the very last and I have quite a few things to say about the show ranging from the themes, the plot and the production. This is a lengthy post as I hand wrote about 6 pages for each series, the first page you read, I didn’t, that’s an additional intro that I couldn’t think of at the time of writing my thoughts on Series 1, so, please sit back, grab a glass of your favourite beverage and some schnackos and let me introduce you to the world of Survivors: Series 1.
A virus rips through the entire world, wiping out 99% of the human population. Series one introduces us to our motley band of survivors, ok so maybe not motley but more, home counties, upper middle class stiff upper lip types. We meet Abby Grant first, posh, lives in a big house in the country with her husband Peter Bowles, has a live-in house keeper and a massive Tennis Court in her back yard. Her son Peter is off at boarding school when the virus hits and becomes ever so worried about her son...and her husband who is having trouble getting home from the city due to train line disruptions.
Meanwhile, Abby’s husband arrives home and assures her everything will be alright, as you do. Abby has come down with the sickness and seemingly slips into some sort of coma. She wakes a few days later, only to find her husband slumped dead on a sofa having contracted the virus from her.
There’s some striking imagery in the opening episode, brilliantly titled The Four Horsemen and beautifully written by British sci-fi legend and show creator, Terry Nation (he created the Darleks). One scene sees Abby looking for signs of life in her village, first she finds the local doctor dead at the bottom of his stairs then a church full of dead people slumped in the church pughs, leading Abby to ask god to make sure she’s not the only one left. It kind of reminded me of when Zac first discovers he’s the only one left in the brilliant The Quiet Earth (1985) and not Homer’s reaction when he discovers he’s the only one left in the Treehouse of Horror episode The Homega Man….moving on…
Abby decides she needs to find Peter and travels to his school where she find it almost completely deserted except for an old teacher who tells her that Peter went off with a group of boys and some of the surviving teachers. He tells Abby that people will have to start again, relearn skills we once used before machines made it easier like making an axe head and other such tools.
Back to Jenny who’s been roughing it in a car all night, she comes across perineal hobo and bucktoothed Welshman, Tom Price, a down and out sort of vagrant, brilliantly played by Welsh character actor Talfryn Thomas, who if you are a fan of Dad’s Army, temporarily replaced James Beck who played Joe Walker after he died mid series, as a local photographer. He’s a dodgy lecherous type who’s only looking out for himself. Tom would pop up a couple of times before joining up with the survivors in the second half of series 1.
Jenny hears Abby’s car but just misses her.
In episode 2, Genesis, we’re introduced to Greg Preston, an engineer and helicopter pilot returning from a journey to find his wife dead. He gloats over her making us believe they never had a good marriage and decides to take to the road.
He comes across a woman dressed in a fur coat flagging his car down for help. This is Anne Trantor and she’s a bitch..You’ll find out why soon enough. Anne needs Greg to help a man called Vic Thatcher who’s legs have been crushed by an upturned tractor. Greg follows Anne’s directions to a quarry where she and Vic had made a sort of makeshift settlement, stocked with food and ammo. Vic apparently was a 70s version of a modern day Doomsday prepper. Using his very limited knowledge of modern medical procedures, Greg puts a tourniquet around Vics broken Legs and spends the night in the trailer at the bottom of the quarry. He decides to leave the next day to find some medical supplies to help Vic. Anne can’t see a life with Vic and decides to leave him. As Greg returns with the meds, he sees Anne and she informs him that Vic is dead.
Thats a taste of the first two episodes of Survivors. Greg, Jenny and Abby all meet up and decide to stick together for a bit, they find some kids, John and Lizzy, not related as John was staying with his grandma who died and Lizzy lived just up the road. They take the kids with them. They finally settle in a huge sort of Castle I guess, played brilliantly by Hampton Court house. They picked up some more survivors on their way to Hampton Court including an old Polish woman named Emma who’s only function is to make food for everyone, look after the kids and clean and Wendy, a young woman who is introduced to us in an episode in which Tom Price tries to persuade her to sleep with him in return for some food and Barney, a young man with learning difficulties.
In an earlier episode we’re introduced to Charles Vaughn, a man who’s set up some sort of commune up at a farm called Whitecross with ideas of repopulating the world and self sufficiency modelled on the Kibbutz method, everyone pays in and works. Charles would return in series 2 as vastly better written or re-written character although he still maintains some of his initial core ideas of kibbutzism.
Finally we’re introduced to the last of the joining survivors, Charmin Wentworth, the secretary and minder for Rich Businessman Arthur Russell, a man so out of his depth at first that I suppose he was written to be disliked only to become one of the most loveable of the group and Paul Pitman, a sort of wanderer, drifting from farm to farm and man who seems to have some farming experience. Paul was actually my favourite character as he was well written, had some depth and cared about his core group of survivors and in series 2, is done dirty. But you’ll find out about that in my series 2 write up.
Series 1 had somewhat of a budget, clearly filming in the big city was going to be costly so making the majority of the show take place out in the country was probably for the best because we get this muddy, wet, cold and green landscape of sheep and not much else. It would make sense that if this was to happen on this scale, the country would be where you went, find a cottage nestled away somewhere that you could fortify. And its this atmosphere in the first half of the series that really pulls you in. Episodes 1- 6 are probably the best of the series and takes in everything from self imposed government making claims to local areas and how the man in charge lays claim to all that surrounds his area like supermarkets. It takes the idea of a small group of unrelated people, finding each other at a time when there were very little people around and deciding to forge some sort of life together in order to survive. Also a mother, determined to find her missing son and themes of self sufficiency, repopulation and federating communes and settlements.
The second half of series one settles more into the self sufficiency model, making cheese and pelts, warding of unscrupulous types and even deciding the fate of one of their own in a brilliantly written episode titles Law & Order which finds the group setting up a sort of kangaroo court when one the group is found murdered, the episode has a brilliant twist and showcases some outstanding performances from all involved, especially Talfryn Thomas’ Tom Price who by this point had cleaned up and joined our core group.
We also get the return of Vic Thatcher in the episode Spoil of War where Greg send Tom and Barney to get some supplies from Vic’s cabin in the quarry only to discover he’s still alive. Vic eventually joins the group and with his broken legs, takes on the task of teacher to the kids as he can’t really do much else. One of the best later episodes see’s the return of Anne Trantor and Vic’s absolute thirst for vengeance. Great acting by Terry Scully as Vic and Myra Francis as Anne.
Series one is good, it starts off incredibly strong but falters as it hits the midway point, settling into the “monster of the week” style of story telling, where week after week our survivors come up against one problem after another, a problem that series 2 seemed to have major trouble with. Series one also suffers from introducing characters and then not knowing what to do with them, Emma, Wendy and Charmin suffer the most, even Lucy Flemming’s Jenny feels underwritten considering she’s the 3rd lead. Throughout all three series, Survivors struggles with introducing new characters and then struggling to do anything with them, it’s a major problem for what is in essence and ensemble character piece.
I’d say out of all 3 series, Series 1 is probably the strongest, that could be due to the creative team of Terry Nation, Jack Ronder and David Parkes and producer Terrence Dudley. Ultimately Terry Nation went as far as he could with the show and felt he had nothing more to add so left the show. Terry Dudley took over as show runner and along with Jack Ronder, put all the blood sweat and tears into the remaining two series despite dwindling budgets and some absolutely horrible video camera footage that the whole of series 3 was shot on.
Out of our three main protagonists. Carolyn Seymour as Abby and the great Ian McCulloch are the stand outs, sure they’re posh as hell and probably wouldn’t survive two weeks in the real world, but both actors put everything into their performances. They have the better lines, the more interesting episodes and some of better storylines, which sadly leaves our third lead, Lucy Flemming, to wander around complaining, whining and generally being quite annoying as well as selfish. But that’s because throughout the whole series run, Jenny is always horrendously underwritten, only to get a little bit of better writing towards the end of series 3 and even then her character still comes across as selfish, however, the show had some huge ambition back in the mid 70s, the scale of show seems huge and using what basically amounts to the entire west country as your set, really shows the scale and scope of what they were going for.
Some of the stand out episodes in series one are…
The Four Horsemen (Ep1)
Genesis (Ep2)
Gone Away (Ep3)
Spoil Of War (Ep8)
Law & Order (Ep9)
Revenge (Ep11)
On the Whole Series one of Survivors is really good viewing. Probably not for everyone, especially during this Covid pandemic, but for people who, like me, absolutely adore the post-apocalypse genre, Survivors is prime viewing. It’s essential viewing. What I would compare it to is, it’s sort of like The Walking Dead only minus the zombies and with a lot more talking or like the CBS show that was screwed over and is infact one of my favourite TV shows of all time, Jericho. Imagine if The Walking Dead and Jericho were set in the English and Welsh countryside, that would be what Survivors is.
The BBC would return to the world of Survivors in 2008 when it decided to reboot the series for the new millennium and while that version did take characters names and some of story strands, it was more of its own thing, inserting a conspiracy narrative into the plot and beefing up the action so It wasn’t people standing around for 50 minutes talking about what they should do instead of actually doing it. Sadly after 12 really good and gripping episodes, BBC decided to drop the show in 2010, leaving us on a cliffhanger….The Bastards.
I’d highly recommend seeking out the original series, it’s available on DVD in a complete set with series 1 – 3 or if you’re a Scrooge McDuck, It appears that all 38 episodes are on YouTube. It’s essential viewing for Post-apocalypse fans and an interesting time capsule of how people thought and acted in the mid 70s, just don’t get offended by it’s portrayal and attitudes towards women, even if they are outdated.
So if you enjoyed reading this exceptionally lengthy review of series 1 of Survivors, I have another two series to go, Series 2 has been written and I’m currently half way through series 3’s write up.
Thanks for taking the time to read this and remember, stay safe, wash your hands and please don’t get offended by everything….
No comments:
Post a Comment