Apocalypse now

‘Episode Six: The Quest for a Cheesemaker.’ Yes, of course I quite see why Terry Nation had to take a slightly more pessimistic route than this. But his series remained much more grounded in verisimilitude than the new one does. In Survivors Mark II, everyone is called on to act like a character from Big Brother, needlessly generating tension when any normal person would just shrug their shoulders and get on with it. So, for example, the girl who’s a doctor decides she doesn’t want to be a doctor any more (why?), and the omni-talented black man has to undergo serious persuasion before he agrees to team up with anyone else (why?) and one of the characters has to be a murdering thug (because obviously, 99.99 per cent of the human population having been wiped out just isn’t interesting enough a storyline on its own...)

God, and I was so looking forward to this drama becoming a staple of my viewing week. I despair, I really do.

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Ray Daniels

November 27th, 2008 12:40pm Report this comment

I still remember the scene where Abby hacked her hair off, so yes, I guess those old series do stick in the mind. Well done, Terry Nation.

ian skidmore

November 28th, 2008 11:28am Report this comment

cannot wait for a TV programme that deals with getting rid of decomposing bodies. Surely though that should come under"Garden Remakes"
My gardener's brother in law was buried in his garden and I am told thy resultant tomatoes are delicious

Malc

January 11th, 2009 2:09am Report this comment

Similar rules apply to food. One of Survivors’ main premises — as it was in the original, though much less clunkily done — was that instead of banding together in co-operative groups, Britain would start resembling Somalia, with lots of savage, greedy gun-toting groups vying for supremacy, all trying to take control of the main food depots.

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Looks like it...

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