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0KT0BER's avatar

I've still only watched bits of Survivors, and mostly from when it originally aired and my parents had allowed me to stay up 'a little bit longer then'. I fear watching it in entirety now, a bit like revisiting books read very early like Alan Garners Weirdstone. I want to do it but suspect I may well tarnish the brassy finish in our current situation.

I have watched all of Sapphire and Steel though, howabout you Woes? ;)

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Millennial Woes's avatar

I'm afraid S&S isn't my kind of thing. :(

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0KT0BER's avatar

Fair play, if you gave it a go I shall button it.

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Mat's avatar

Good review. Watched Survivors at the start of lockdown (not that I ever was a 'believer') then went on to Secret Army as it seemed better to get inspiration from a resistance movement! Worth a watch too.

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GVFischer's avatar

This must have been remade in the 2000s. I know I watched Survivors—a British post-flu show the main characters are diverse: 3 white women, a black man, a Muslim boy & youngish man, a white male ex-con, one of the white women is bisexual. The storylines seem similar (not identical) to the ones you lay out. Now I need to watch this earlier version. The later version is a mixed bag but worth watching.

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Millennial Woes's avatar

Yes, there's a remake. I've never watched it, because remakes of things I love only wind me up!

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SoupCruncher's avatar

About the classes, I would say they would be up ended in a global catastrophe, with those that can do with their hands, the practical skilled, those who know the countryside, would be the most valuable members. Someone like that verses a city banker, well, the city banker would be subservient, unless of course his hobbies included fishing and bow hunting.

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Seventies Survivor's avatar

Thanks for writing this. I watched "Survivors" in 1975 as a 10 year old and it blew my mind. I made sure I watched every episode. Recently I got the DVD. Viewing it now, (as you say) the series is a fantastic time capsule of 1970s pre Thatcherite Britain. This was a wonderful place/society to live in because I lived In it and remember it well. 1970s Britain was paradise. I would also include the 1970s "All Creatures Great and Small" with this aesthetic and ideology? Perhaps the 1970s "Survivors" production aesthetic and writing could form the basis of a new British Nationalist screen revival, with mainly all white cast, traditional gender roles etc? Making videos like this would certainly be a lot cheaper than the over-produced media garbage of today? Even the most basic video cameras (eg: on an iPhone) are better than the BBC video cameras of the 1970s. Series like "Survivors" should inspire a new generation of nationalist film-makers in 2025? We can dream like that again. 

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Joel Pacheco's avatar

1970s "All Creatures Great and Small is one of my favorites. I also like Brideshead Revisited and to Serve Them all my Days--'Rise!'

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Stephen Cowley's avatar

I wonder what MW would make of Douglas Hurd's Scotch on the Rocks (BBC, 1973), but apparently it's no longer available.

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Millennial Woes's avatar

I'd like to see it. I just checked Wikipedia. Apparently two of the five episodes are missing from the archives.

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Eric Novak's avatar

Survivors 1975-1977 is up on YouTube. Thanks for the review and recommendation.

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