SURVIVORS

   UK tv series (1975-7). BBC TV. Created Terry NATION (who also wrote 7 episodes in season 1). Prod Terence Dudley. Writers included Jack Ronder, Martin Worth, Roger Parkes. Dirs included Pennant Roberts, TerenceWilliams, Eric Hills. 3 seasons, 38 50min episodes in all. Colour.

   The post- HOLOCAUST novel is a particularly UK subgenre of sf, and so it is not surprising that the theme's first significant appearance on tv should come from the BBC. The accidental release of a deadly virus kills almost everyone; in the UK only about 7000 people are left alive. S follows the adventures of small groups of mostly middle-class survivors, their efforts to cope without TECHNOLOGY and their encounters with other, less sympathetic groups. The main characters include a housewife (Carolyn Seymour), a secretary (Lucy Fleming), an engineer (Ian McCulloch) and anarchitect (Denis Lill). Initial gloom is gradually replaced by rather too cosy an atmosphere, with aspects of a rural paradise - not only have all those smelly cities disappeared, but also the working classes. The subtext involves a very English political myth (which in literature goes back beyond Richard JEFFERIES's After London [1885]) about the strengths of a life lived close to the land. The overnight disappearance of technology and in particular the shortage of petrol are never adequately rationalized. Nation's partial novelization is The Survivors * (1976).

   JB/PN