Public Servant Lifestyle

Terry Nation's stark, nightmarish vision of a decimated human race struggling to keep alive in the harshest of all possible worlds.

Survivors (Series One) by Terry Nation.

Seventies post biological apocalypse thriller Survivors makes it onto DVD at long last. Conceived - and written for in this first season - by Terry Nation, creator of the most formidable – and certainly one of the best - known TV villains in the Daleks for Doctor Who – the series is a terrifying two-fisted survivalist drama set in contemporary Britain.

A thoroughly groundbreaking and startlingly realistic series that first aired in 1975 at the height of the Cold War, Survivors' post-apocalyptic storylines immediately gripped the imagination of the British public and remain compelling viewing to this day.

Pandemic

This first series of thirteen episodes (the show ran to three seasons in all) charts the onset and aftermath of a virulent man made pandemic – a plague that seems to have wiped out over 99.9% of the world's population.

Reminiscent of the kinds of disaster fiction epitomised by John Wyndham’s novel (and the own BBC’s adaptation of) Day Of The Triffids, as well as foreshadowing end-of-the-world productions such as drama Threads and recent cinema films such as 28 Days Later the series pulls no punches. The seriousness of the needs for food, shelter, defence and simple medical care – set against a scrambling dog-eat-dog world where all the old rules of society and law and order have vanished lead the characters into dark territory.

These early episodes chart the struggles of a lone group of survivors, following them each from their ‘old’ lives, as the disaster unfolds, through the privations that follow, until they band together into a loose precarious community and begin to focus on long-term survival.

The action follows the experiences of three principal survivors: headstrong former privileged housewife Abby Grant (played by Carolyn Seymour – Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Voyager, Quantum Leap, Steptoe & Son Ride Again), enigmatic engineer Greg Preston (Ian McCulloch - Zombie Flesh Eaters, Contamination, the Peter Davison-era Doctor Who story Warriors of the Deep) and London secretary Jenny Richards - Lucy Fleming (The Avengers, Smiley's People, Wycliffe). Jenny Richards is the first character we meet – and interestingly is the only character from the first episode who makes it right through to the end of the series, three seasons later.

By the close of the series – which is notable for featuring a very high body count amongst the regular cast, as befits a show with such a bleak setting – it had taken a slightly more optimistic turn. By this stage, the series was being penned largely by writers other than 'Nation had all but lost its original principle cast (though in the primitive feudal society that is by then emerging in this version of future Britain they continue to cast shadows over the show) and was in danger of turning into a self-sufficiency drama, akin to a brutal version of (then contemporary!) TV sit-com The Good Life.

Death Toll

The story also became – arguably – weakened by later, hopeful revelations that perhaps the original death toll from the virus had been exaggerated – and that there were more survivors than the less than 1% that had first been thought.

This was all leading toward an optimistic conclusion to a series which had previously celebrated the indomitable nature of the human spirit, in the face of an overwhelming breakdown of society. The fact that the survivors were carrying on, in a precarious way, despite viscous in-fighting and the human race having fallen below the numbers needed to easily repopulate the planet was at the core of the show. The universe that these characters occupied was at once recognisable as our own, but was a bleak, hard place filled with lawless brigands and ruthless frontier justice.

However, the season presented here for the first time on DVD contains the core of series, when it is at its most brutal. The sickening kangaroo court of episode Law and Order raises hard issues about what such a community can or should do with a murderer when there are no higher authorities to appeal to for guidance.

The cruelty of episode Something of Value sees the cast starting off a tragic chain of events, while battling for a remnant of the old world - a tanker of invaluable fuel oil. Starvation faces the characters with the very real dangers of not being able to provide for themselves in a climate that makes farming brutally hard work – especially with no such expertise among them – and the constant threat of raiders from other communities. Garland's War questions the old morality of property, titles, privilege and ownership and raises the spectre of the rag-tag human survivors, hard pushed to live on as it stands, killing themselves off in petty territorial disputes.

On video, the series is available as three video double packs, or as a complete slipcase gift set. The DVD boxed set contains all thirteen episodes - which have been digitally remastered for enhanced sound and picture quality.

Special Features

The DVD format also boasts a host of special features, including audio commentaries and filmed interviews with Carolyn Seymour, Ian McCulloch and Lucy Fleming as well as director Pennant Roberts, plus a special guest interview with Tanya Ronder, who played youngster Lizzie. On top of this there’s private film footage shot behind the scenes during the making of series one and a comprehensive 36 page fully illustrated booklet, containing new and previously unseen behind-the-scenes photos.

Terry Nation was a former comedy scriptwriter – working with Tony Hancock, amongst others. He went on to create seventies space opera Blake's 7 for the BBC, as well as to continue writing Dalek stories for Doctor Who until the end of the seventies, along the way creating the enduring character of their crippled, insane creator, Kaled scientist Davros.

Technical and special features:

All 13 Series One Episodes:

The Fourth Horseman
Genesis
Gone Away
Corn Dolly
Gone to the Angels
Garland's War
Starvation
Spoil of War
Law and Order
The Future Hour
Revenge
Something of Value
A Beginning.

More information available in TV & Radio, DVD / Home Video