Spoilers. The end. There's nothing like the apocalypse to fire the imagination. Even though we're eight years past the Y2K "disaster", we're just four years away from alleged doom in 2012. There's just no escaping it. Post-apocalyptic fiction has always been popular because of our morbid fascination with humanity's extinction. In 1975, Doctor Who writer Terry Nation created a cult end-of-the-world series called Survivors, which the BBC have now remade with the help of Primeval showrunner Adrian Hodges…Survivors '08 finds the world in the grip of a devastating killer 'flu that has affected 90% of the population. It's a global pandemic, but our attention is on Britain, where MP Samantha Willis (Nikki Amuka-Bird) is trying to calm the situation with media spin, as the UKs travel infrastructure goes into meltdown, the water and electricity supplies fail, and panic threatens to engulf the country…
The opening half-hour introduces the ensemble: Abby Grant (Julie Graham), a woman struck down by the 'flu who survives and goes on a quest to find her missing son; her loving husband David (Shaun Dinghwall); Al Sadiq (Phillip Rhys), a rich, womanizing playboy whose latest conquest dies in his bed; Dr. Anya Raczynski (Zoe Tapper), an inexperienced doctor coping with a hospital full of dying people; Najid (Chahak Patel), an 11-year-old Muslim boy whose family are killed; Jenny Collins (Freema Agyeman), a primary school teacher who contracts the 'flu; Tom Price (Max Beesley), a murderer who survives the contagion and escapes from prison; and Greg Preston (Paterson Joseph), a fully-prepared loner…
The biggest challenge facing Survivors is audience fatigue with the concept, as we've recently seen similar scenarios play out in 28 Days Later, I Am Legend, Shaun Of The Dead, the Dawn Of The Dead remake, etc. And those movies had the added bonus of monsters to punctuate all the ghost town survivalism. But, there are no zombies or Triffids here.
However, Survivors holds its own against its big-budget brethren -- forgiving its use of stock footage, and what looked like the opening credits of Planet Earth! The empty roads and motorways were on a big scale, the I Am Legend-inspired aerial shot of a sports car tearing up barren streets was surprisingly good, while the small, nightmarish touches impressed (dead neighbours discovered in bed, the suddenly loud twittering of birds, etc.) Not sure if people would start decomposing so soon, though.
The actors all did a good job, even if most characters had personal predicaments that were difficult to care about. Julie Graham's unmistakable Scottish burr caused flashbacks to the hated Bonekickers, which was difficult to shake, but her character here was thankfully less volatile and irritating than her archaeologist bitch. Still, how could we care about Abby's search for a missing son we hadn't even met?
Everyone else served their purpose well, but only Max Beesley's villainous Tom Price brought an air of unpredictability and excitement to proceedings. Having a murderer in the mix should keep things interesting, and it's the one element that seemed fresh and different. The scene where he viciously kills his prison guard was particularly striking, and Beesley appears to have found his calling as a sour anti-hero.
Another success was the unexpected death of two main characers (played by two of the more recognizable actors), whose presence in the Survivors marketing campaign led us to believe they'd be around for the full run. For fans of the original Survivors, one character's '70s-counterpart survived the virus, which added to the surprise here.
After a confident 30-minute set-up to doomsday, and the 30-minutes of immediate fallout, Survivors was shaping up very nicely. It only really began to falter in the last half hour, once the inherent excitement was over and we had to focus on the characters post-apocalypse. Abby's search for her son was plodding and dull, Anya just wandered around looking dazed, and Samantha disappeared from the show.
The late-arrival of Paterson Joseph as the pragmatic Greg was encouraging (even making you forget the poor FX and editing of a petrol station explosion), but he ultimately heralded a slew of silliness -- like Al and Najid deciding to have a kickabout with a football to inappropriate music on the soundtrack. Remember, this came hours after Najid found out his entire family and most of the world are dead -- a traumatic experience writer Adrian Hodges didn't get close to reflecting.
In fact, Survivors was trying to look on the positive side a bit too much. Abby shrugged off her husband's death after a big scream, focusing on the possibility her son survived, to eventually deliver a speech asking for cooperation and mutual support from the fellow survivors. Greg sounded almost pleased to have a chance to live off the land in isolation. Tom relished escaping his prison sentence to embrace his newfound freedom. Al didn't seem too concerned by anything (loitering in his luxury flat eating caviar and drinking.) Najid found himself in a Mosque full of dead worshippers (didn't he notice them all dying around him?), but seemed content hook up with Al and scoff junk food.
Still, while I'd have preferred a more nihilistic tone (if only for this opener), episode 1 was plausible and well-crafted sci-fi that delivered the goods. Adrian Hodges Primeval isn't known for its characterization, plotting and dialogue, but this was a world away from his ITV dinosaur silliness. Unexpectedly gripping and without too much flab, Survivors '08 takes Terry Nation's classic and imbues it with contemporary issues, slick production values and a likeable cast.
I was also worried about how Survivors could sustain itself, once the empty landscapes and glib atmosphere begins to wear thin, but Hodges includes a coda with a secret bunker full of white-coated scientists. Has this been a government conspiracy to usher in a "new world order", or a twist about the pandemic's cause? Whatever, it's a wise move to add another layer to the mythology, and gives us a potential group of antagonists for our survivors to grapple with.
23 November 2008
Writer: Adrian Hodges (based on the novel by Terry Nation)
Director: John Alexander
Cast: Julie Graham (Abby Grant), Phillip Rhys (Al Sadiq), Zoe Tapper (Dr. Anya Raczynski), Shaun Dingwall (David Grant), Paterson Joseph (Greg Preston), Freema Agyeman (Jenny Collins), Chahak Patel (Najid), Nikki Amuka-Bird (Samantha Willis MP), Max Beesley (Tom Price) & Bryony Afferson (Patricia)
