One virus. Millions dead. A few Survivors (Survivors)

Member Name: HonestBob

Product:	Survivors
Date:	29/11/08 (251 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A quality drama

Disadvantages: Only one episode per week!

Survivors is the latest drama offering now showing on BBC1, Tuesday nights at 9pm (catch up with the last episode on BBC iplayer).

This is an updated version of a seres produced in 1975 and created by Terry Nation (the creator of Dr Who's Darleks).

The first episode introduced us to the main characters;

Abby Grant, played by Julie Graham from Bonekickers, who becomes the mother figure, but wants to find her lost son.

Tom Price, played by Max Beasley from Hotel Babylon, who was in prison for murder at the time of the virus outbreak.

Greg Preston, played by Joseph Paterson from Casualty, mystery man, self-confident and has plans of his own.


Other characters include Anya Raczynski, an attractive, young doctor who wants to recreate herself and keeps her medical training quiet. Al Sadiq, a young playboy whose life was self-indulgent and carefree before the outbreak. Najid Hanif, who is taken under the wing of Al and manages to hold on to his religious values and wants to search for his cousins in Bradford.
Plus Freema Agyeman, who appeared in the first episode and seems to have been killed off (suprising seeing as she was probably the biggest star on the cast list - perhaps she will be resurrected in future episodes?)

The storyline is simple. A flu virus with the capacity to take control of an individual's immunity system and turn it against them, wipes out 90% (possibly more) of the world's population. How this virus enters the population to start with is not known, but scenes of a secret laboratory seem to indicate that the virus was manmade and released (hopefully by human error, but that will probably become clearer as the series progresses). What follows is death on a mass scale. Bodies remain unburied, lying where they died. The infrastructure of society is quickly overwhelmed, public transport grinds to a halt, the Government reacts with too little, too late, and basic utilities crash as more and more workers either die or are too ill, or too scared, to go to work. Over a period of just a few days the virus destroys society as we recognise it and the 'survivors' begin to travel from the cities, and the risk of cholera, typhoid and dangerous looters, in search of a safe haven and other like-minded people.

From this point our cast meet each other en route to finding a new life and the first two episodes follow their search for food and shelter whilst showing how society has broken down in such a short time.

My opinion:

I am really enjoying this series, both as an armchair viewer and as a Sociologist. So far we have discovered their stories as the programme cuts between slices of each characters life and it is interesting to see how individuals interpret their situation, those that want to recreate themselves and those that want to hold on to the past. The characters are believable, and already I can sympathise with their plight, something that I find essential if I am to engross myself in a programme.

I watch very little television, but I'm already finding this unmissable,

Summary: Addictive TV