Surviving Survivors

Following the recent outbreak of street art I feel it is now time to confess that I have now watched every episode of Terry Nation’s 1970s drama Survivors.  I don’t know why but I read some professor of television say that to understand a series one has to watch every episode of it – so for better or worse I have done.  Well, it’s something to do when you’ve exhausted the back catalogue of Dr Who… and Ava Alexis bought it me for my birthday last year… I’d seen tiny parts in the past but I’d never seen the whole thing and now you can see everything again so...
 

The main thing I’d heard about before watching it is that Terry Nation hated the producer Terrance Dudley.  I think it’s fair to say that they loathed each other because Terry Nation said this a lot while he was alive.  Then again Terrance Dudley seems to be hated by quite a few people.  Actually Nation was above "hating" people publically so I think what he actually said was that he had a producer who was “stupid” because he didn’t like the direction the series had taken.  When it came to his next creation Blake’s 7 the BBC inflicted the reverse torture on him – making him write every single episode himself but that's another story...

Dudley had also argued with Kit Pedlar and Gerry Davies a few years before this as the producer of their science-gone-wrong drama Doomwatch.  I don’t know why exactly but I suspect it’s because he tended to operate like a one man band… Over on this site about Doomwatch he writes:

“I didn’t want any more script editors. In fact, I produced a number of programmes in my time without benefit of a script editor; sometimes they make for very heavy weather, and if the producer is also a writer, it is probably unnecessary.”

This may not actually seem a revolutionary point of view in the era of the Russel T Davies “showrunner” but in the slightly more compartmentalised and quaint world of 1970s terrestrial television a lot of people thought that Terrance Dudley was not a nice person.

But did his attempts to be the Charlie Chaplin of 70s TV and do it all himself : write, produce, cast his own children …I guess he drew a line at writing the music? … actually work?

It’s hard to tell whether such a show works or worked retroactively as it depends what you mean by work.  One thing that is noticeable about it is it is incredibly slow.  It’s hard to imagine these days a story being allowed to be told at this pace.  Entire episodes seem to be people just wandering about lost.  To be fair this is supposedly a source of much of the drama – how do you survive when society no longer has any structure? – and some of the film of people wandering about aimlessly is genuinely scary but …it also becomes boring.  On the other hand there’s some nice scenery so when it is boring at least it’s pleasantly pastoral.  That said you really couldn’t make a program like this these days – Well, they tried a revival and the public quickly got bored and it was cancelled.

The first series follows a cast of characters who form into a community and, of course, we don’t know who will die of plague, who will become part of this community and who will become outcasts.  Peter Bowles is To The Mannor Dead half way through episode 1 so…  In his absence the leaders of the group of Survivors are Abby Grant (the upper middle class one), Greg Preston (the annoying engineer with the parka) and Jenny Richards (the working class one).   Oddly despite 90 per cent of the world’s population pushing up the daises which one would presume would leave the 10 per cent remaining with a lot of spare clothes to try on most of the characters never seem to change their outfits ever – presumably for continuity reasons.

As the series progresses the three central characters are gradually surrounded by a growing band of subordinate characters.  Most notable of these is probably Talfryn Thomas (probably best remembered as Private Cheeseman in Dad’s Army) as Tom Price an archetypal drifter turned profiteer from chaos.  While the other characters focus on rebuilding society in various ways or simply survival Tom Price’s view of the catastrophy is “what’s in it for me – isn’t this great everything’s free!”  He promptly avails himself of a very big car and lots of booze until in possibly the most interesting series 1 episode he gets very drunk and rapes and murders a woman.

Greg and Abby then appoint themselves the police and judiciary – on the grounds “who else is there?”- and promptly arrest the local village idiot who, of course, Tom Price has already fitted up.  Oh well, I suppose it’s too early for separation of powers… After voting to kill the “murderer” – on the grounds they don’t have the resources to incarcerate him - they then, of course, end up shooting the wrong man.  Only Jenny is smart enough to clock that this is the worst fit up since Barry George was arrested for the murder of Jill Dando (or would have been if that had happened yet)...   To compound their pomposity and stupidity when Tom Price confesses to Greg and Abby it was him all along they then cover up the fact they’ve completely messed it up and shot the wrong person to avoid losing their political authority as if they ever had any.  Just like a real government.  Sorry have I given the plot away?  Well, it is 30 years old… allow it.

Abby Grant spends a long time during series 1 debating whether to search for her lost son or stay with the community which gets a bit tedious.  This may or may not explain why by this point Carolyn Seymour who played her had turned into an alcoholic in real life.  By her own admission Carolyn Seymour was pretty pissed all the time at the time and this led Terrance Dudley to unceremoniously sack her.  To add to the cast confusion the actor playing the crippled Vic Thatcher (Terry Scully) had a nervous breakdown part way through the shoot and had to be replaced with another actor (Hugh Walters) but what can you do?

Well, with Seymour having been handed her cards and many of the actors in series 1 presumably not being contracted to a second series Terrance Dudley used that old stalwart of producers everywhere who want to refresh their series and burnt the surplus characters in a fire.  These days it would be a terrorist explosion.  But this is the 70s and there being no effective government to be a terrorist against a fire was probably the best option.  Following the fire the community merge with another community at a place called Whitecross and the series turns into something of a soap opera.  In this series Greg Preston spends a lot of time with the Whitecross community leader Charles Vaughan – a bearded sustainability campaigner whose time has come.  As someone points out to him “it’s okay for you … you were a crank and now you’re the leader … but some of us have had the reverse career trajectory” …or words along those lines.  It's like listening to a load of Labour backbenchers slagging off Jeremy Corbyn.

The Tom Price hole/role in the cast for this series (comedy relief and sexual harassment of the female population) is then passed to John Abineri as Hubert Goss – as a slightly more likeable gruff drunk.  With Seymore gone Lucy Fleming’s part as Jenny Richards is beefed up although she spends a lot of time bringing up her and Greg Preston’s adopted children (one of whom is Terrance Dudley’s own real life son), gets pregnant and becomes a bit dull.

Roy Herrick plays a character called Lewis Fearns who reveals himself to be a parson which puts Charles and Greg’s backs up because he’s a threat to their authority.  At one point he says something is “not in his line” to which someone responds “what exactly is your line?”  A couple of episodes later we discover it is getting shot.  Also saved from immolation at the end of series 1 is Michael Gover who puts in a nice understated performance as Arthur Russell – a world weary ex-Managing Director who dispenses project management advice in a slightly depressing way before he depresses himself into an early grave.

The community comes into contact/conflict with other communities.  Charles Vaughan has some odd ideas that everyone needs to sleep around to increase the gene pool.  And you know things are getting really bad when Peter Duncan from Blue Peter visits a windmill.  After 12 episodes of this it becomes obvious that there’s only so much drama to be mined from subsistence living so Terrence Dudley had to think of a solution that would shake things up again but ideally not literally kill off a load of characters because he’d already done that …. So a hot air balloon arrives to whisk Greg Preston off to Norway in search of technology and electricity.  How he was going to ever get there in a source of transport with no directional control or how the balloon got there in the first place when prevailing UK winds are usually east-west is a plot hole best not cogitated on.  This is largely because Ian McCulloch had left for a successful film career – appearing in a video nasty called the “Zombie Flesh Eaters” which didn’t go very well because it was banned by Mrs Thatcher.

With Greg only appearing fleetingly to be beaten up by children and contract smallpox in the final series there are now larger parts for Charles Vaughan, Jenny Richards and Hubert Goss who set off in search of Greg on horses… as series 3 leaves Whitecross and turns into something like an English Western with lots of galloping about and the occasional steam train as political society starts to reform.  Charles Vaughan becomes more of an action hero.  Jenny Richards ditches her sprouts in search of her bloke.  There’s some rabies.  And Hubert Goss gets more interesting things to do than lust after women and drink hard liquor …occasionally… such as killing Brian Blessed.  One wonders if this is character development or they just divided up the Greg Preston part and found they didn’t have anyone else to give the action to.  Eventually everyone escapes to Scotland where it turns out there are hydroelectric power stations and hard liquor due to the hills and they all live frugally ever after…



I suppose one has to hand it to Mr Dudley in the end - Terry Nation may not have liked what he did with his creation but he managed to stretch this premise out to 3 series which is good going I suppose ...when the 2008 version supposedly based on Nation's novel only lasted two...

So was it worth watching ?  Yes ... would I watch it again...? erm...