Survivors (1975)-Review

This review is adapted from a new Tales of Future Past page that will go live in the near, um, future.

Survivors: An everyday story of post- apocalyptic country folk.

I've been rewatching it on Youtube lately and it's a pleasure to rediscover this half-forgotten classic. I mean that literally. All I could remember from seeing it 35 years ago was one scrap of dialogue and hazy memories of people in the near future running about on horseback.

Survivors* is a late entry in the "quiet catastrophe" stakes that follows a band of, well, survivors after a Red Chinese scientist accidentally unleashes a deadly biowarfare virus on the world. Quickly spread by modern air travel, the disease soon takes hold in every country on Earth and within three weeks the world's population has collapsed by a factor of 5000. In Britain, only 10,000 people remain alive out of a population of 50 million. The corpse-filled cities have become hopeless pockets of disease, leaving the survivors scattered and alone in the countryside.

From this atomised state, the remnants of mankind have to come together again to form new communities and rebuild society from scratch. What complicates this is that the passing of the old world took with it all the industrial infrastructure on which we all depend for our most basic needs. Before they realise it, the last Britons have been flung back into an agrarian world where simply getting enough food to eat is a daily struggle and a bar of soap is a luxury.

Created by writer Terry Nation (father of the Daleks) and aired on BBC1 from 1975 to 1977, Survivors initially followed Abby Grant, a banker's wife who loses her husband in the plague and sets off in search of her young son, whom she believes against all odds to be alive. Teaming up with engineer Greg Preston and young Jenny Richards, we are taken along as they encounter other survivors who are coping with the new world they've found themselves in; some trying to make a new start, others seeing it as a chance for power.

Eventually, our heroes abandon the search and settle down in a stately home surrounded by farm land that serves as the nucleus for a new community. As new people come and go and the community faces disasters such as a fire that forces those who survive it to move to new location, the stories revolve around the problems of not just staying alive, but how to deal with crime and criminals, fulfilling people's spiritual needs, the up-welling of superstition, and simple difficulties of holding the group together in the face of hardship and isolation.

But it isn't all grim. In fact, though it's rarely acknowledged, the post-Death world has a lot to offer. The bucolic existence that the survivors must adapt to is much more peaceful and even beautiful compared to the old days and for some it affords a new lease on life, though others literally pine to death remembering when there were football matches and families were intact.

In many ways, Survivors is one of hardest of hard science fiction futures ever imagined on television. Once the Death is out of the way, the problems faced are very solid and down to earth without a hint of fantasy. Viewers of the 21st century remake with its running about, intriguing politicians, mysterious scientists, overacting, and virus that acts like a Mexican jumping bean will be surprised at how many plots in the original revolve around where to keep the pigs and trying to buy rubber boots. Everything from potatoes to beer to salt poses problems for our heroes that they have to overcome and all of them involve solutions that wouldn't be out of place in a farmer's almanac and none include sinister helicopters and evil pharmaceutical executives in evil suits and evil ties.

At times, it's sort of a sombre version of The Good Life–which isn't surprising because both shows owe a lot to the self-sufficiency fad that cropped up in the wake of the Energy Crisis. The basic question of Survivors is, how would you carry on without our industrial world behind you? How would you make something as simple as a candle that we buy today in little boutiques for very large prices and take completely for granted? Could you make one from scratch, we're asked in this clip:

Actually, I could make a candle from scratch and out of several different materials, so the school master would have got a bit shirty with me.

"Okay, smart guy. Could you make this.. This pencil?"

"Well, since you ask..."

"A computer!" he'd cry. " One that could play noughts and crosses."

"Out of match boxes and marbles?"

At this point, I suspect he'd get that hunted look I see so often.

Granted, the writers do overestimate how fast the groceries will run out, but chalk that up to poetic licence and budget restrictions. They wanted to show a world forced to fall back on its most basic resources, but couldn't afford to show one that had declined for a generation and they couldn't realistically deal with characters a couple of decades divorced from our world and keep up the drama. Besides, it's the building rather than the decline that's the real story.

And well it should be.

(You can see whole episodes of Survivors here.)

*No, not the reality show or the laughable remake from 2008.