Survivors (1970's Terry Nation series) - Classic or Dud?

otherwise, YES. SURVIVORS. GREAT. The first series was also good, but suffered from Terry Nation's episodes.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7107597.stm

Cult show Survivors to be remade

The original starred Ian McCulloch, Lucy Fleming and Carolyn Seymour
The BBC is to remake cult 1970s series Survivors, it has announced.
The original series centred on a post- apocalyptic world in the aftermath of a plague which killed more than 99% of the global population.

The remake will be set in the present day and follow a group of individuals as they fight for day-to-day survival.

Sci-fi writer Terry Nation created the original series. He also wrote Blakes 7, and created the Daleks - Doctor Who's arch enemy.

The BBC secured the rights to The Survivors after months of negotiations with Nation's estate.

Launched in April 1975 on BBC One, Survivors ran for 38 episodes over three series.

'Brave' programme

Kate Harwood, head of series and serials at BBC Drama Production, said: "The opportunity to remake Survivors for a modern generation proved irresistible.

"After months of negotiations, I am delighted that one of British television's great cult series will return with original stories packed with adventure and spirit set against the backdrop of our own recognisable world."

The new series will be written by Adrian Hodges, who also wrote Ruby In The Smoke, Shadow In The North, Charles II and Primeval, and will be broadcast on BBC One.

He said: "Survivors was one of the bravest and most exciting programmes of its time and I'm thrilled to be involved with re-imagining it for a new audience.

"I remember its original impact vividly and I hope we can make a similar impression with the new version.

"Its themes remain as relevant as ever and while we will be staying faithful to many aspects of the original, we will also be bringing the story into the 21st Century and making it accessible to contemporary audiences."

uh-oh, "re-imagining", "making it accessible to contemporary audiences".

please to be any good at all. plz

it's going to be all about organic veg boxes isn't it?

am watching the orig on dvd: fkn AWESOME.

this fuckin show

there is no point in remaking it.

just saw the first episode on youtube, sold. found video shop that has season one on VHS.

thank you, thread

At the moment the new version could go either way.

I think episode one last night suffered from trying too hard not to be 28 Days Later. Not to mention some dreadful overacting (especially from Julie Graham) and too many I Am Going To Make A Major Allegorical Statement About Humanity setpiece speeches.

But there were some arresting moments in there too and if the producers can avoid going down the hysteria/Dawn Of The Dead route it could become interesting.

I stayed with it to the end so that must count for something (although the final Oh Noes It's All A Sinister Conspiracy By The Man scene doesn't bode well).

needs more zombies.

Zombies are boring (as that Charlie Brooker thing on E4 recently proved beyond doubt). They should have the courage of their convictions and turn it into a post-holocaust Emmerdale.

Think of the potential - in a couple of series it'll turn into a comfy, cosy Sunday saga about farming and it'll be a cash cow for the BBC!

I see that username, and it brings that Tammy Wynette song to mind...

Zombies are boring (as that Charlie Brooker thing on E4 recently proved beyond doubt).

er? maybe to you?

Stick to the original concept: get Swedish broads flying over in hot air balloons in Series 2.

AND WEIRD CULTS IN WINDMILLS

Well they could just chuck in a ton of zombies and get some easy ratings.

Or they could concentrate on less flashy but more rewarding things like building up and developing characters and writing proper stories with thought-through plots (including the hot air balloons and the windmill cults?). We'll see.

Enjoyed it, but hope that it keeps the vibe of the original without just recycling the same plots, which would be pretty pointless.

Is Freema/Jenny dead? That seemed a bit of a surprise.

They didn't make it abundantly clear, i.e. keeping their options open.

No explanation of course as to why Julie Graham suddenly woke up after three days recovered unless she's supposed to be in some Pincher Martin-type hellish afterlife.

apologies Marcello, i looked before i leaped and thought this was about the other Survivors tv prog. zombies in general are not boring but yeah no need to bring them here.

zombies in the other survivor prog would certainly make things more interesting.

> Is Freema/Jenny dead? That seemed a bit of a surprise.

imdb has a list of each episodes the characters appear in right there on the front page. very spoilery.

was kinda joking about the zombies because it felt a lot like a pedestrian 28 days later. making it more like The Stand, say, would perhaps make it interesting, or at least different. don't think i ever saw the original.

they were saying 90% of the population died. then where are all the people?

After the first 45 mins all I could think was 'enough with all the bird sfx already!', might there be some sort of animals revolt element to it?

they were saying 90% of the population died. then where are all the people?

Judging by the dodgy second ep preview at the end, they are all standing guard at their local Netto.

Yeah; if 90% of the population died there'd still be 10,000 people in Exeter, never mind Manchester.

All they have to do now is rescue that dog barking in the locked car and we'd have a new Scooby Doo where they visit various locations where odd villains are trying to do devilish things only to be unmasked as their next door neighbour/hairdresser/cousin etc. who would have gotten away with it if it hadn't been for you meddling cont. 1971.

this wasn't as good as the original, and the only thing it added was pointless 'boo!' moments and the prospect of it all being the work of evil scientists right at the end.

which makes it more like 'lost' or something, and takes away the sense of total abandonment and rebuilding everything that you had in the '70s.

can't remember what proportion of the population died in the original -- more than 90% i reckon -- but it was a bit more convincing in that they quickly got out of the city.

they seem to want to have a larger basic cast right off the bat with this one.

I think more than 90% have died in this one too.

I know that at one point in the first episode the government advisor was saying that they predicted 90% to die, but I assumed that they were wrong.

^

it's all been a bit boring 'by the numbers' modern telly innit. there was something more personal, petty and small-scale about the way the story was set up in the original.

the distribution centre with bread-head lady and forklift accident was a chalk quarry and tractor accident in the original. which they combined with the looting story to move things along, so it looks like they will be staying close to the main stories, but, (thankfully) speeding it all up for us (the modern viewer). on which grounds we can overlook the many coincidences of ppl meeting up quickly in that setup ep (just been thrown out of a car? don't worry, the remaining 1% of the population will be along soon to help you - oh and they'll be medically trained).

whatever is going on with virus-proof bunker and ebil scientists doesn't bode well. hopefully this won't go anywhere action cliché, just explore the premise of the original title sequence.

Is this worth me torrenting?

What about the original?

New one is not worth it.

Old one is not worth it.

I actually clean forgot about the second episode entirely - note to idiot BBC1 programmers: it pays to keep things on at the same time on the same day of the week if you want people to keep watching. Is it worth catching up with on iPlayer or indeed is it worth watching ep. 3 tonight?

beeb not learnt from 'dorritt fiasco' (c) Points of View letter writer #23872

There was a fiasco?

I watched a couple of minutes of ep. 3 last night. Dull, dull and dull.

And Julie "Please Hit Me" Graham is really, really irksome whatever she turns up in.

This is making Bone Kickers look awesome.

This is back for a second series tomorrow. I am looking forward to it.

I think what I like most about post-apolocalyptic worlds is that I want to live in one. Really quite badly.

I blame Z for Zachariah.

i only saw the first ep of series one and it was shite compared w/ the 1970s original. so no sale here.

history mayne making the rounds

I'm with you Scik Mouthy.

First episode of Season 2 was tonight. Just watched it on the iPlayer.

I thought it was very good - very dramatic, lots of edge-of-the-seat aktion.

I'm unsure of what I think about Tom - good/bad person? Does it matter? He's certainly a wise one to have on your side, but even then I couldn't trust him.

Maybe I'm alone here, but I'm still big into this. Just caught up and thought that those were a couple of really good episodes.

is this available anywhere on dvd?

The original or the current re-boot?

either. My mom was telling me about seeing the original on TV, and I've wanted to see it for some time.

A quick Amazon says that, yes, both the original and the first series of the new one are available on DVD, at least in the UK. The second series of the re-boot is currently showing on BBC.

i'm american, btw

Out of my jurisdiction then, I'm afraid! ;-)

I like this! Some of the ceaseless rescuing and capturing and rescuing in this series has not been great though. What I liked about the last series iirc is that the group was more often intact and we got to see how they would make decisions and deal with obstacles together. I like how the little group comes to offer an increasingly viable alternative to the thoroughly compromised disciplinary state apparatus presented by the bigger and more organized group. I want to see more of how this might play out and what kind of new story opportunities it could open it.

it could open up, rather.

The near-farcical nature of the capture, attempt to free, rescuers get captured etc etc storyline was heading towards too much, but hopefully they don't keep pushing that now it's out of the writers' systems.

I'm wondering how Samatha Willis is going to get her comeuppance for being such a deceitful, contradictory bitch. I look forward to that.

fields of salmon absolutely otmfm.

I was literally just coming on this thread to make that same post word for word.

I'm reading the Patrick Ness Chaos Walking books at the moment (Pullman-esque teen sci-fi drama), and while I'm enjoying them, there's a lot of the same capture/escape/capture/escape/capture/escape/ramp up the drama / terror stuff, and really I'd just like the characters to explore a little bit more, survive a little bit more.

Last night there was one very odd moment in terms of cinematography - I've generally been quite impressed with the camera shots, the shallow DOF, nice use of natural light, etc etc, but there was one really fucking clumsy use of superimposition last night when the dude who played Raza in season 3 of 24 and the blonde girl were looking out over a deserted city, VERY obviously studio-lit despite the pseudo-location. I was gobsmacked by how poor it was.

I noticed that too and thought it strange. There seemed to be no reason that they couldn't have stood on a real-life actual hill, as there wasn't even that much of them gazing over a decaying empty landscape, it was more head shots.

why are you despoiling this thread by talking about this godawful reboot?

Dudes, it's a shame what happened to Survivors and all but what you all should be worried about it BLAKE'S 7 REBOOT.

Just caught up with this week's episode, having been at Spoon on Tuesday; very good, very emotional, much more credible tension than the repeated kidnapped-escaped-kidnapped-escaped formula of the first half of this season. Looking forward to next week's season finale.

Amen.

I'm on tenterhooks.

Well, at least we're guaranteed a Series 3 with that ending.

Another decent episode, though not as good as the last couple. Look forward to the next series.

The ending made me think of Aliens.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/apr/13/survivors-bbc

byeeee

Sad face.

Just been reusing an old hard drive's spare space while too broke to get a new one. This has led me to discovering taht I have the 3 series of the 70s show on the drive. So I've been watching series 2 & have got to th epenultimat episode in it. Pretty great, as I remember it being from watching it around the time it came out. Trying to work outif that could be right since I would have been 9 years old at the time. I certainly remember watching some of the programme in the 70s so wonder when it was shown. Could be it was a repeat a couple of years later.

Anyway enjoying it. Interesting to see who turns up in it. Seen Patrick Troughton, the Blyue Peter guy who's also a cameo in a Star wars sequel, Stephen Grief before he was really dumbed down (was he typecast by playing Trigger?) and a few other faces i recognise but can't fully place.

But got a really bad joke about post apocalyptic welsh people hanging 10 running through my head rather too often. Won't repeat it here and see if you know the one I mean.