The Encyclopedia Of Science Fiction:

The post-holocaust novel is a particularly British genre 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. Survivors follows the adventures of a small group 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 Flemming), an engineer (Ian McCulloch) and an architect (Dennis Lill). Initial gloom is gradually replaced by rather too cosy an atmosphere, with aspects of rural paradise - not only have all the smelly cities disappeared, but also the working classes. The subtext involves a very English political myth (which in literature goes back beyond Richard Jeffries 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. Terry Nation's partial novelization is Survivors (1976)

The Guiness Book Of Classic British TV:

The opening credits sequence of a TV series can often tell the viewer far more than simply the name of what he or she is watching. If done properly, credits can reveal style and content, set a particular mood, and even, on occasion, tell a story in their own right.

In a laboratory, a Chinese scientist drops a phial in slow motion onto a hard surface. As the glass explodes, spilling a green liquid, Anthony Isaac's powerful music begins. Now we are in various airports around the world as a variety of oriental diplomats and business men, each unknowingly infected by a deadly plague, become the carriers of death. Passport stamps indicate that the virus has spread to Moscow, New York, Paris, London. A lone church bell tolls as the screen fades to black.

If the opening sequence of Terry Nation's Survivors was designed to freak out its audience then it certainly succeeded.

Survivors was a story of post-apocalyptic life, Taking the premise that 95% of the world's population could be wiped out within a matter of weeks, Nation was fascinated by the means through which the remaining 5% could live when deprived of simple things 20th-century men take for granted; electricity, medical care, transport. In other words, could the sophisticated modern-day man survive a change that would mean reverting back to a much more basic lifestyle, without resorting to barbarism? Nation said that he was of the generation who placed a man on the moon, but as an individual he didn't know how to make an axe.

Terence Dudley, former producer on Doomwatch, was given the task of shaping Nation's four-part outline (basically, episodes 1, 2, 3 and 6) into an on-going series. Like Doomwatch, Survivors was to spend much of its time lambasting the wasteful and useless nature of modern technology and stressing the need for environmental ecology - in both cases giving dire warnings about the future - Doomwatch through prediction, Survivors with speculation.

In the first episode, ominously entitled 'The Fourth Horseman', Nation painted a picture of a comfortable middle-class society suddenly tumbling down around his first two survivors: company secretary Jenny Richards and middle-aged housewife Abby Grant, who first watches her husband (Peter Bowles) die and then sets out on a quest to find her son, Peter. They were joined in the second episode by the series' nominal "hero" figure, Greg Preston, a born leader. The fourth character on whom the first season concentrated was the itinerant Welsh labourer Tom Price, whose cowardly and scheming nature seemed to view the breakdown of society as a positive liberation. As time went on, further regular characters were introduced, several of them, especially Charles Vaughan, taking a more prominent role in later season.

A criticism often levelled at Survivors is that with such stringent class codes maintained, even in the aftermath of such a catastrophe, it was little more than a serious version of The Good Life, but this is unfair and the series tried hard to overcome such prejudice, although one working class character who wasn't a thief, a degenerate savage or a moron might have come in handy. Additionally, such extraordinary sights as the 'wine tasting' sequence in one early episode clearly showed the series' bourgeois trappings.

Having established their central characters in the first three episodes, Dudley and his team of writers were able to explore some of the logistical problems of their new world. The fourth episode, Jack Ronder's 'Corn Dolly', is particularly effective. This episode introduced Denis Lill's character, Charles, the leader of an agricultural community who believed that the key to survival was through childbirth and advocated impregnating as many women as possible.

Further important episodes included 'Spoil of War', written by Clive Exton under the pseudonym M K Jeeves, which concentrated on the switch from industrial to agricultural means of production and a plethora of new characters arriving at the community. 'Law and Order' posed the community with moral dilemmas when a murder was committed (and the wrong man - a retard - was executed for it, having been unable to defend himself), whilst the season ended with Terry Nation's final script 'A Beginning', which saw the departure of Abby Grant, still searching for her son.

Set a year after the first, the next season began with a fire destroying much of the community. Those who are left join Charles Vaughan's nearby village, whilst in the second episode, Don Shaw's 'Greater Love', Paul Pitman dies having risked his life to acquire medicine for Jenny who has just given birth to Greg's son. After catching an infection himself, Paul is exiled from the village to minimise the risk of contagion. Other memorable episodes included 'The Face of a Tiger', where the community makes the chilling discovery of a child murderer in their midst, Roger Marshall's 'Parasites', which provided a superb guest appearance for Patrick Troughton as a lonely traveller, Martin Worth's 'Over the Hills', in which the women of the village rebel against their use as baby-making machines, and Ian McCulloch's writing debut 'A Friend in Need', a strong story of a sniper who kills only women, which included a memorable twist at the end. The season concluded with the departure of Greg in a balloon bound for Norway. McCulloch only appeared in two episodes in the third and final season, both of which he wrote himself.

Of the 12 episodes made for the third season, several were disappointing, and the absence of McCulloch as the series' central focus was a staggering loss. However, 'Mad Dog' in which Charles is saved from a pack of dogs by Fenton (Morris Perry), a man dying of rabies, and has to face the possibility that he has contracted the disease himself, was a startling episode which achieved notoriety at the time for its graphic depiction of rabies. There were, however, problems with the episode, which overran, causing the cancellation of the season's planned final episode, a Roger Parkes story called 'Bleak Start'.

There was still much to commend the season, including a guest appearance by Brian Blessed as charismatic hunter Brod in 'Law of the Jungle'. McCulloch reappeared in the second episode, 'A Little Learning', but wasn't seen again until 'The Last Laugh', an evocative and well-remembered finale for his character in which, after having been beaten up by a group of bandits, he finds the man he has been looking for, Dr Adams (Clifton Jones), only to discover that he has a strain of smallpox.

For two days, the normal incubation period, Greg was isolated with the doctor and when, on the morning of the third day, he emerges apparently fit and well, the audience breathes a huge sigh of relief. However, as he mounts his horse, Greg suddenly vomits, the first sign that he too has the disease. Later, he track down the bandits who have captured his Norwegian girlfriend, Agnes, and rides off with them to almost certain death at the episode's climax.

Still Greg's presence hung over the series. In the following, penultimate episode, 'Long Live the King', his death is only a minor hiccup in the efforts to create a new state with him as its figurehead, as the growing band of survivors, by then based at an old army camp in Yorkshire, find a new source of wealth in petrol and begin to print bank notes stating 'I, Greg Preston, promise to pay the bearer one hundred gallons of Petrol'. The episode ends with a Union Jack, displaying the initials GP, flying over the camp.

In many ways it's a pity that Survivors didn't end on this optimistic note. One further episode, 'Power', was made which concerned Charles and Jenny's attempts to create a hydroelectric plant in Scotland. Despite a strong performance by Iain Cuthbertson, it was something of an anti-climax after the impressive beauty of the previous two episodes, and the series ended on a downbeat note in late 1977.

It's almost certain that Survivors ended up along way from the concept that Terry Nation originally had in mind. It became far less grim and obsessive as the series progressed and, despite the loss of Preston, the thriving survivors seemed, by the end of the series, to be creating a future for the human race, something that seemed unlikely in the dark days of the first season. Perhaps Survivors carried a little too much human spirit and hope with it to be as authentic as Terry Nation wanted, although as an example of entertainment in the field, it remains one of the most powerful and impressive series that has ever been produced.