'THE SURVIVORS’

Press, 15 September 1976, Page 19

'THE SURVIVORS’

The key' to our civilisation is its dependence on the many contributory manufacturing skills necessary to support a sophisticated lifestyle. Denied these skills, life for the majority, would become intolerable. Furthermore, without the amenities they provide — light, heat, food, transport, education, medical care — our very existence would be in jeopardy.

The BBC drama series “Survivors” is based on this premise. The series creator Terry Nation (the man responsible for “Doctor Who” and his mons t r o u mechanical enemies, “The Daleks") has taken a situation in which some 98 per cent of the world’s population has been killed by a plague, and he looks at what happens to the few that are left.

“Survivors” is about the extermination of an old world and the beginning of a new one. Those left in the world have only their hands and muscle power to build with. Nation includes an underlying warning in his story; he maintains that “it is at

our peril that we forget that the whole colossal structure of present day civilisation rests on cooperation. As individuals we are less practical than Iron Age men.”

The series focuses on one group of “Survivors" led by Abby Grant with Greg Preston and Jenny Richards. All three are alone after the catastrophe and at first their objectives are confused. However, the three meet, and with others they find along the way, they begin to construct their own particular brave new world. The first six stories of “Survivors” were recorded with the conventional mixture of film and videotape. The last seven were made by using videotape onlyv on location. This was achieved with a relatively' new machine, the L.M.C.R. unit, a lightweight outside-broadcast camera with a mobile control room.

The producer, Terence Dudley, spent eight months looking for a suitable location for the “Survivors” settlement. His requirements were many,

and peculiar to a series of this type.

First and foremost he needed a quiet location, one bereft of any sound of modern life. With civilisation ending with a bang, not even a whimper should be heard; no aircraft. no noise of road traffic, no sounds of industry.

The “Survivors” house I had to be one that was 1 easy to defend. Some 1 human survivors might be 1 dangerous, all animals cer- i tainly would be. On the other hand the i buildings had to offer vis- I ual variety in order to i give directors flexibility. I There had to be arable. ! and grazing land, there I had to be running water. : Hills were necessary as j were quiet roads and I lanes. It was not easy to find i all these amenities in one place, but eventually Terence Dudley discovered them in a manor house near Hereford, not very far from the border between England and Wales. “The Survivors” will begin on TVI tonight.