When the apocalypse comes, I want it to be scripted by a 1970s screenwriter. That’s my conclusion after watching the first few episodes of Terry Nation’s landmark 1975 ‘cosy catastrophe’ series Survivors on BritBox. Everything was so much more innocent and charming back then, including the end of the world.
Survivors establishes its MacGuffin in the opening credits: a montage which begins with a masked, enigmatic oriental man in a laboratory where he accidentally smashes a vial; we then see clips of him in a suit travelling through various airports, with passport stamps (New York, London, etc) taunting us from the past with just how easy it was back then to be a jet-setting international traveller. This man is what we’d now call a ‘superspreader’. Within a few days, 99 per cent of the population will be dead of this leaked virus.
The remnants of humanity are in a pretty good place with not a killer shrub or undead horror creature to be seen
The actual mass death part is over very quickly.
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