Survivors - the re-make

[whitefire]

I am a big fan of the work of Terry Nation - especially apocalypse TV show in the 1970' Survivors. I have all three series on DVD, and love every minute of them. I am even so nerdy as to know of the disagreements that Nation had with the BBC and the script writers about the story line of the original series.

Needless to say I was quite excited about a remake. I even thought I could put up with the lead actress who plays Abby Grant - actress by the name of Julie Graham, whose other roles have included Gillian Magwilde in the BBC archaeology series Bonekickers.

The storyline for those who don't know it - is that over 99% of the world's population is wiped out in a plague that starts off as nothing more than a flu like virus (perhaps bird flu?), then mutates into a bubonic plague like sickness. It takes hold within a few days. It's spread is accelerated on a global scale by international air travel, and the free movement of people around the world.

People fall into a deep slumber and very few survive if the sickness takes hold. In fact in this new version, the only person known to have "survived" the plague is the rather irritating character Abby Grant. A small number of others have survivedthe plague through a natural immunity.

The new series updated some of the core elements of the story - including having a secret government bunker still doing research after the plague had wiped 99% of the population out.

Series 1 - now over - stuck relatively closely to the original series. It depicts life in an immediate post apocalyse situation - where survivors are making choices about how to lead their lives. Some want to looteverything left and think they can survive that way, others want to usurp power and form a government, still others start adopting tribal power routes to survival.  Etc..

In this new version of the series though I got the impression that the choices facing the survivors were not as well represented as in the 70's version of the series. Part of the problem is that there were only 6 episodes of this new version, as opposed to the 13 episodes of the first season of the original. The other thing that I think has cramped the style of the new version of this series is that the BBC have gone out of their way to represent every minority in the group of survivors which kind ofmakes the whole thing less believeable The core group now includes a lesbian doctor, an asian playboy, a scottish housewife, a young muslim boy, a convicted murderer, a high society diletante and a divorced estranged father. Nothing wrong with that, but it does seem to indicated that the BBC was more concerned about inclusive programming than decent SF. A real shame.

However, overall season 1 was a reasonable start to the new vision of Survivors. It just doesn't compare to the original. I am not against the remakes of classic TV shows - but only when they improve and expand the originals - BSG would be a prime example of the remake being a significant improvement on the original.