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22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A plague kills 4.999 out of every 5,000 people alive. How would you cope?, June 12, 2006
This review is from: Survivors - Series 1-3 - Complete [Region 2] (DVD)
Survivors may not be available in the U.S. but all three seasons are for sale in the U.K. If you can play European DVDs and like stories about a world where society has been destroyed then Survivors is for you.
The plot line is simple a plague, called simply the Dealth, has killed off 4,999 people in every 5,000 The population of Great Britain has fallen from 60 million to 10,000. We learn later in the series that the population of Cairo is only 12. The first series follows two women (Jennie and Abbie) and one man (Gregg) who seek to start a new life and struggle for the basics of life, food, shelter and clothing. They cannot get these things fron cities as they have become no go areas infested with rats, dogs and piles of dead bodies.
The first series most distressing episode is however not about the struggle to find food and shelter, but how do you administer justice in a world without law. A group of survivors try a simple minded man for murder. If he is guilty what do they do with him. There are no prisons, they cannot exile him from the group as he cannot survive without them. Is their only choice to kill him? even in countries with the dealth penalty he would have not been executed because of his mental state. If they decide to kill him who will do it?
In the second series Abbie goes off in search of her son and Jennie and Gregg merge their settlement with another community led by Charles who becomes the shows main figure by series three.
The show does have a number of faults, everyone is a bit to clean and we are told early in the series that modern man has fewer skills than stone age man. Yet a lot of the survivors appear to have useful skills, Gregg is an engineer, Charles is an architect and other people who turn up are bee keepers, herbalists or have other skills. Also we are told that no two persons who knew each other survived the dealth, yet later in the series whole familes appear to have survived.
This being a British series from the Seventies, the middle class survivors are the ones who get things done, while the working class survivors are feckless and need their social betters to boss them arround.
The show's main problem is however that it cannot decide if it needs to concentrate on how you survive, how do you grow your own food? How do you pull a tooth with no medicines? or does it become an adventure series with heros battling bad guys who have come to plunder. The show treads an uneasy path between the two trends. This is acknowledged in series three when Jennie calls Charles a little boy for going off on adventures instend on concentraiting on the farm.
Survivors is however a first rate drama which poses some questions which with luck we will never have to answer. How do you preserve meat,even if you have salt? How do you make an axe when the last one is broken? What do you do about having children in a world where most babies will die before they are five and there are no contraceptives?
Most of all what would you do if you had survived the dealth.Could you cope in the new world?
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
More relevant today than when it was made back in 1975, May 10, 2007
This review is from: Survivors - Series 1-3 - Complete [Region 2] (DVD)
When this British series was first broadcast in 1975 I remember being gripped by its frightening premise. 99% of the world's population is wiped out by a virus and those who are left - the survivors - have to deal with infinite problems in their new world. Discovering what those problems are is one of the pleasures of watching this series.
Of course in some respects this series has dated, not least because of its small budget compared to what we are used to seeing on T.V nowadays. Lack of production values is what many modern viewers see as a sign of poor quality, although really this series, just like 'Thriller' and other 1970s shows, is far from amateurish. It has quality writing and acting and, unlike much of modern TV, its direction is never showy, pretentious and self-conscious, but restrained and correct. Also, there is no background music which I found a refreshing change .
That's not to say the series is without its problems, which first manifest themselves around episode 4. After a thrilling and classic first episode (written by series creator, Terry Nation), 3 survivors - Jenny, Abby and Greg - are established as the backbone of the series and the actors playing these parts contribute highly to the success of episodes 2 and 3. But then the writing starts to let them down. Episodes 4 and 5 concentrate far too much on survivalist and apocalyptic ideas and not enough on drama. Characters come and go around this point and the series looks to be losing its way. But don't worry, Terry Nation returns, drama is restored with 'Garland's War' and then its uphill all the way. (If you chose to skip episodes 4 and 5 then you will lose very little in story coherence).
There is also a problem with the Jenny character who gets less significant as the series progresses. I'm not sure what her contribution is because she doesn't seem to do anything (something which, I understand, was a source of frustration for the actress herself). Abby and Greg are much more interesting and very well cast (Carolyn Seymour and Ian McCulloch). They play off each other well and need to, because their disagreements (which usually centre around the battle between principles and survival) fuel the narrative with moral dilemmas and give it such dramatic impact. Despite both being strong-willed people who don't like to compromise in their views (Greg is a somewhat suspicious loner; Abby struggles to come to terms with her new life for a variety of reasons) the actors inject these characters with humanity and believability, making them sympathetic, compelling and watchable.
In episode 7 there is finally an attempt to establish more long-term characters and this is the main reason, in my view, for the improvement in the series from this point. Crucially, the writers brought back Tom Price, who appeared in the first few episodes but was noticeably missing when the series took its mini-nosedive around episode 4. Price is a vital character because not only is his misbehaviour and dishonesty responsible for so much drama (which is brought to a head in 'Law and Order', the best and most famous episode of the series) but the actor who plays him, Talfryn Thomas, gives an excellent, almost comic, performance.
The quality of this DVD is excellent. There are 13 episodes in all on 4 disks, commentary on 2 of the episodes, interviews with the director and 4 cast members (the actors who played Jenny, Abby and Greg and also one with Tanya Ronder who played the little girl, Lizzie) and an interesting booklet which details the history of the series.
All in all a highly recommended buy, especially if you remember and enjoyed the show from the 1970s. Those chilling opening titles (the premise established so economically) and that ominous music really bring the memories flooding back...
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
As good as DAY of the TRIFFIDS., January 29, 2007
This review is from: Survivors - Series 1-3 - Complete [Region 2] (DVD)
When an enigmatic unnamed scientist accidentally infects himself with a lethal engineered virus he unwittingly spreads it world wide via air travel. Focusing on London, England we see the effects of the virus as millions succumb and civilization collapses accordingly. The story hones in on a handful of emotionally scarred survivors who come together and attempt the difficult and painful reconstruction of a new society no longer able to depend on supplied science and technology. In one episode entitled "Law and order" the survivor's group are faced with a rape and murder of one of their number following a raucous celebration. An intellectually disabled member is falsely accused and sentenced to death with the killer himself voting for the man's execution. After one of the group leaders carries out the killing, he learns the identity of the real killer and is forced to allow him to stay in the group and withhold the information as the news of the tragic error would permanently splinter and destroy what they fought, against enormous odds, to create. Survivors is gripping stuff; well acted, cleverly written and creatively directed - if you like character driven Sci - Fi drama then this for you.
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