Dawn of the dead

Not quite a match to the titles of old

 From an opening shot of planet Earth that’s hugely reminiscent of the first moments of the 2005 series of Who, we have entered an age where telefantasy need no longer mount stealth attacks on the television schedules – it is a genre that is currently out and proud.

It’s slightly perverse then, that it’s the traditional sci-fi overtones that slightly let down what is otherwise a fine opening episode, but we’ll come back to that in a minute. With Dead Calm and Spooks: Code 9 not long having left our screens, not to mention cinema releases I am Legend and 28 Days/Weeks Later, the end of the world is a territory  viewers are now very familiar with. As such, the extended opening sequence which outlines the scale of the disaster is slightly redundant, albeit perhaps it is setting the groundwork for future plot developments to come.

What’s of more interest is the way in which each of our heroes deals with the unfolding nightmare. Those characters plucked from the original series cope in much the same way as their mid-1970s counterparts (with the exception of Jenny who is killed off Lisa Faulkner-in-Spooks style) suggesting  the apocalypse is immune to fads, trend and even technology. The new additions to the storyline though, smack more of a contemporary production, with both Tom (Max Beesley) and Al (Phillip Rys) essaying different studies on the theme of nihilism. Although Al’s function is yet to be clearly defined, Tom’s as the snake in the camp makes for an intriguing addition to the programme, and one which should safeguard against this series developing into The Good Life as per the original version.

However, in the main this version of Survivors surprises by sticking so closely to the original source material. Nation was never the wittiest writer of dialogue, or a particular master of the twist in the tale, but what the 2008 version of his series shows, is that he did know how to lay in a solid plot. Abby’s search for her son Peter, was and remains, exactly the right drive to underpin what otherwise would become simply a drama about staying alive.

"Please God..."

"...Don't let me be the only one"

Storywise what may be the least successful element however, is the wholly new addition of a plotline featuring as yet unnamed figures working in a top secret laboratory. First glimpsed at the end of the episode, the early signs are that the insertion of this kind of well-worn sci-fi trope may well hamper Survivors. The original series was about how to exist in a world without infrastructure and control, and the suggestion here that some form of Government may still be in operation, threatens to seriously undermine all that lies at the intellectual core of the series.

Still it’s too early to tell, and from the first 89 minutes, Survivors has done more than enough to ensure it’s going to get the benefit of the doubt for now.

But who out of this lot will survive?

The BBC’s new take on Terry Nation’s Survivors starts this Sunday and it’s actually really good. As per Little Dorrit we’re getting a bit of scheduling madness in that it then continues on Tuesday, where it’ll stay for the rest of its run.

OTT was fortunate enough to talk to Adrian Hodges, the Primeval supremo who’s penned this revival. 

“I can very, very clearly recall watching the first episode [of the original series].” he says. “And I can remember the impact it had, and the shock that was felt by everybody who saw it. Subsequently, when I became a writer, that was the kind of thing I was always looking to create. Sometimes you do and sometimes you don’t. That’s the way it goes.”

Read the full interview here >>

Is this the end? Or a new beginning?

“Please God, don’t let me be the only one“. 

Surely not the sentiment of the BBC press office last night at the Apollo West End in Piccadilly as they launched Adrian Hodges’ remake of Terry Nation’s, er, novel based on the 1970s post apocalyptic TV series.

In fact there was a pretty good turnout – this is a show that from the announcement of its commission has really captured the imagination of the TV industry.

“It’s high concept, Survivors. It’s not about car crashes, it’s not about guns and it’s not about explosions,” said Ben Stephenson, the BBC’s Controller, Drama Commissioning addressing the press. “Although they are all in it in quite an exciting way. Most of them have something to do with that evil Max Beesley [playing Tom Price]. But much more than that it’s about who we are as people. It is, at heart, a character drama.”

Plus, there was an extra announcement: “Our audiences will be able to take advantage of the brilliant new iPlayer series stacker feature, which means they’ll be able to watch any of the six episodes of the series on BBC iPlayer right up until the end of the series”.

Adrian Hodges added: “One thing I did want to say is those of you who remember the original version of Survivors will find in this re-imagining some things that are very similar to it, some things that are inspired by the original but handled very differently and many things that are entirely new. I hope everything you see tonight is in the spirit of the work of a great television writer, and I’d really just like to use this opportunity to pay tribute to the energy and imagination of Terry Nation who did so much to make watching TV a great experience when I was growing up.”

And first reactions to this feature-length opener? Very good indeed. We’ll preview the show nearer the time, plus we’ll be interviewing Hodges. But, no, it doesn’t all start with an Oriental-looking man getting all butter fingers with a test tube.

This originally appeared at the end of this but has since been snipped. A baffling bit of Chinese Whispers.

Anyway - Survivors is coming back. What fun! Definitely a format applicable to modern times, how will the show be updated? I’m guessing it won’t be a continuation at all, but if they did stick with the same characters who’d be taking on the short-lived Peter Bowles role? My vote: Peter Bowles! Abby would be played by Daniela Nardini, Greg by Matthew Macfadyen, Jenny by Jessica Hynes. Oh, and the cataclysm would have to be updated to play on current day paranoia. Is biological warfare too 2002? What do you think?

The failure of Night and Day and Family Affairs can probably be traced to the fact that they simply re-iterated the old, worn formats of a central locale and group of families in a contemporary settings. Whilst I wouldn’t for a minute suggest that the space station of Jupitor Moon would be the place to go, the success of Bleak House suggests that the auidence is capable of enjoying something “a bit different”.

Perhaps Chris’s post suggests another option – why not rearrange the premise of Survivors into a twice weekly half-hour soap format? A post apocalytic world has the EastEnders grim factor built in, and there is still the potentiality for the usual comings and goings from the make-shift village, as new survivors are found and the existing characters die of radiation poisoning or starvation. Suddenly the original becomes innovative within a new format, which seems to be how most television works anyway.

One of the stars of the original version of Survivors, Ian McCulloch, has often attempted to revive the series but never quite managed to do so, so he might be feeling a little peeved that a new series could be about to go ahead after he had his ideas turned down.

This sounds like fantastic news for fans of telefantasy, but according to the report they are only talking about a six-part series, consisting of 60-minutes episodes – surely too brief to create memorable characters and tell a decent continuing story? The idea of the post-apocalyptic story is hardly original and the last attempt at this kind of theme was ITV’s The Last Train which was only six parts and felt slightly aimless. It is tricky to remember any of the character names from that show, but the longer run that the original Survivors had resulted in even some of the minor cast sticking in the memory.

In the wake of Doctor Who‘s success and the forthcoming Robin Hood, the BBC are clearly attempting to change direction slightly in terms of drama despite their earlier statement that they were planning to make lengthier runs of existing programmes. Could it be that there are two competing drama camps operating at the BBC with two different agendas? Does the left hand of the BBC know what the right hand is doing?