Survivors on Britbox

Detail from Survivors banner on the Britbox platform, September 17 2020 (right-hand view)

FROM TODAY ALL three series of Survivors are available to stream, and to download for offline viewing, from the subscription-based and ad-free Britbox service.

Britbox is a recent collaboration between the BBC and ITV which brings together archive, classic and contemporary television programmes from both services’ catalogues.

Back in the 1970s, the BBC screened each series of Survivors only once. With no repeat broadcasts on terrestrial TV, it was not until the launch of cable and satellite television services in the 1990s that Survivors secured another screening on British TV screens.

Back then, the UK Gold station provided a platform for many classic cult and genre TV shows including Blake’s 7, Doomwatch and The Prisoner. All three series of Survivors regularly appeared on the UK Gold schedule, with the show’s last run ending with the broadcast of series three finale “Power”, shortly after midnight on Monday 27 April 1998.

While the first series of Survivors was released on VHS video (three times within ten years) and all three series on DVD (between 2003 and 2005), the show has not been made available through any UK TV service since the sign-off on UK Gold.

As well as Survivors, the Britbox catalogue currently includes all four series of Terry Nation’s Blake’s 7, genre favourites UFO, Space 1999, Quatermass and the Pit, Star Cops, The Avengers, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and, naturally enough, Doctor Who.

Britbox is accessed through a web browser on a PC, laptop or tablet. A Britbox app is available for mobile devices and smart TVs.

The service offers a free seven day trial, and is available to subscribers for an ongoing monthly fee which provides unlimited access to the full contents of Britbox (which operates within the UK only).

Unlike other online programme services, such as Amazon Prime and Netflix, Britbox has not yet commissioned new programmes. Although it has acquired rights to some original dramas, Britbox’s main focus is on “previously enjoyed” content.

Listing for the first three episodes of series one of Survivors on the Britbox platform, 17 September 2020
Listing for the first three episodes of series one of Survivors on the Britbox platform, 17 September 2020
Detail from Survivors banner on the Britbox platform, September 17 2020 (left-hand view)
Detail from Survivors banner on the Britbox platform, September 17 2020 (left-hand view)

Entertainment Focus enjoys a full rewatch of Survivors

Portraits of Abby Grant, Tom Price, Greg Preston, Charles Vaughan, Jenny Richards and Arthur Russell by artists Tom Bailey - illustrating the critical rewatch of Survivors by Entertainment Focus
Portraits of Abby Grant, Tom Price, Greg Preston, Charles Vaughan, Jenny Richards and Arthur Russell by artist Tom Bailey

TWO JOURNALISTS FROM Entertainment Focus have recently been enjoying a full rewatch of all 38 episodes of Survivors from all three series of the show, and sharing their thoughts, criticisms and observations in a series of linked articles in the online magazine.

Good-humoured, interesting, sometimes contentious, but usually well-informed, Greg Jameson and Samuel Payne began their journey with The Fourth Horseman several weeks ago and are working their way right through to Power.

The five linked articles published so far take the form of a conversation between the two. As you track their critical rewatch through each of the three series, you’ll find yourself nodding in vigorous agreement at some points, and shaking your head in disbelief at others – but then that’s a key part of the fun in hearing someone else’s perspective on what might well be your favourite TV show.

As well as screen-shots from different episodes, the series includes an original artwork by Tom Bailey – which presents six portrait caricatures of Abby Grant, Tom Price, Greg Preston, Charles Vaughan, Jenny Richards and Arthur Russell (see above).

Series one

Series two

Series three

Portraits of Sam, the Laird, Alec, Agnes, Brod and Hubert from series three of Survivors by artist Tom Bailey

Survivors ‘reaction videos’

There’s a different perspective on the early episodes of Survivors‘ first series in the form of a new set of ‘reaction videos’ available on YouTube. ‘Reaction videos’ are now a common format of fan participation on the platform. In them, fans video their reactions to watching film and TV shows, so the viewer sees their responses to the drama as it unfolds on-screen.

YouTuber medusa cascade produces ‘reaction videos’ exploring a variety of sci-fi, cult and TV shows, and has uploaded her responses to the first nine episodes of series one of Survivors. Each video is a 10-15 minute edit of the highlights of each episode view. Medusa Cascade is new to Survivors so her reactions are those of a first time viewer – and she has a particularly intense and emotional reaction to seeing Law and Order for the first time.

Survivors scriptwriter Martin Worth dies aged 91

Martin Worth - scriptwriter - Survivors

MARTIN WORTH, who wrote a total of seven scripts for the second and third series of Survivors (1975-1977), has died at the age of 91.

Born in Balham in London in November 1926, Martin Wigglesworth (who later changed his name to Worth), became a scriptwriter after a short stint as an actor in repertory and one-off theatrical productions. He went on to write for the stage, radio and television, penning memorable early TV scripts for Public Eye (1965, 1968), The Borderers (1970) and Special Branch (1970), before being hired by Terence Dudley to work on the eco-cautionary Doomwatch (1970-72). His script for the 1974 BBC documentary series Microbes and Men won him that year’s prestigious Best British Documentary award by the Writers’ Guild. The year that the first series of Survivors was shown, Worth penned all six episodes of the BBC’s adaptation of The Master of Ballantrae, which starred Brian Cox.

Worth’s work on Survivors’ second series

Worth joined the writing team on Survivors for series two, as the show’s centre of operations relocated to the Whitecross settlement, following the departure of Abby Grant and the blaze at The Grange. Worth was fascinated by life within the real-life community at Callow Hill, which provided the setting for the fictional Whitecross, “The location was wonderful,” he later explained to David Richardson, in an interview for TV Zone. “I took detailed photographs of everything.” Worth incorporated many of his observations and insights into his scripts, and plotted his stories to take best advantage of the layout of the landscape and buildings on site.

Worth’s first story, By Bread Alone, is a thoughtful reflection on the place of religious observance and theistic faith in the post-Death world. The impact of Lewis’ emergence from his crisis of faith drew directly on the life story of Worth’s own father; a priest who experienced his own existential angst when he came to doubt his long-held Christian beliefs. It was the kind of introspective, philosophical story which frustrated those looking to up the action-and-adventure quota on the show, but for those who warmed to its insightful themes and immersive atmosphere it marked an impressive debut for an incoming scriptwriter.

It was a measure of producer Dudley’s confidence in Worth that he was assigned writing duties on the closing two episodes of the second series of Survivors. The clash of generation and gender, brilliantly depicted in Over the Hills, is centre stage in the best of Worth’s three scripts for series two (and arguably his strongest single contribution to the show overall). It’s a script that shows Worth’s ability to craft a passionate clash of principles and strongly-held beliefs into an utterly compelling fifty-minutes drama, delivering something that is morally complex and which is determined to present the views of all the protagonists as valid and worthy of attention.

Series two closer New World is a cleverly-crafted mystery-adventure which signals the expansion of the series’ field of vision far beyond the environs of Whitecross. Worth’s script cleverly reveals the wider post-Death vista that the third series will set out to explore, and sets in motion Whitecross’ relegation to the fringes (finding a way to separate the two sparring actors playing the male leads on the show at the same time). Dudley required Worth to compress too many developments into a single episode, but with top-notch plotting and dialogue, and excellent guest characters, there’s a good case to be made for New World being the strongest of Survivors‘ three series finales.

In later years, Worth remained keen to put forward his conviction that the presence of the BBC Outside Broadcast crew at Callow Hill had a detrimental effect on the community, which – he suggested – unravelled under the pressures that filming brought. “We destroyed the very survivors we were trying to write the series about,” he explained to Timescreen. It was a contentious view, which many others who worked in-front-of and behind the cameras did not recognise. In contrast, they remember the friendships and ‘personal entanglements’ between residents and BBC visitors which developed during the spring and summer of 1976. They also recall the warm and high-spirited ceilidh that was held as the on-site ‘wrap party’ for the shoot, and note that Denis Lill and John Abineri continued to be welcome guests at Callow Hill for many years after the production left. It may simply be one of those rare cases where Worth’s evident love for a good story got the better of him.

Worth’s work on the third series of Survivors

This view aside, Worth was still disappointed by Dudley’s decision to break-up the Whitecross settlement and push the series out on the road, believing that there was untapped dramatic potential in the world of Whitecross commune and small-holding. He felt that abandoning that framework in favour of the struggle to rebuild civilisation could only accelerate the series’ demise. Setting his own misgivings aside, Worth embraced Dudley’s changed brief to deliver three contributions to what became the final series of Survivors that fully embodied the new perspective.

The riveting drama of Law of the Jungle, lit up by a bombastic performance by Brian Blessed, offered a chilling realisation of the ‘red in tooth and claw’ realities of humankind’s relation to nature in the post-Death world. It was a story that stood in complete contrast to the pastoral, bucolic and settled life of Whitecross, and was exactly the kind of the script that would have enthused Dudley. Bridgehead and Long Live the King each saw Worth very effectively wrangling the different elements that were the series’ metaphors for the revival of civilisation and of society. The scripts for both episodes again showed Worth’s talent for melding abstract themes and ideas with convincing, and very human-centred, drama.

Worth’s script for Power, the series last ever episode, is a fantastical ‘procedural’ story, showcasing the effort to bring the first Scottish hydroelectric power plant back online – while a saboteur in the survivors ranks attempts to wreck their plans. Worth placed great store in ensuring that the technical elements of this story were accurate, visiting both a power plant and a sub-station as part of his preparation. “I was shown exactly how it worked,” he explained later. “Getting it all right, doing accurate research, is very satisfying. Do it responsibly and you can always get dramatic value out of the difficulties you encounter.” This attention to detail did not lead Worth to turn in a ‘dry’ plot. In Survivors‘ closing fifty minutes, he ensures that the drama remained centred on the social and personal aspects of the struggle to reconnect the country’s first power supplies avoiding the narrowly mechanical. Power remains something of a contentious endpoint amongst Survivors enthusiasts, but very few of the controversies that this last episode give rise to are reflections of any shortcomings in the script. Worth crafts an assured sign-off for Survivors‘ sometimes disjointed final series, and delivers a number of welcome pay-offs in the process.

After Survivors

The year that Survivors came to an end, Worth also provided scripts for The Onedin Line and the BBC’s adaptation of Poldark. He would go on to write for Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense (1984), Gems and C.A.T.S. Eyes (1985) and Drummonds (1987), and continued to pen scripts for both theatre and radio until his retirement.

Worth was rightly proud of his contributions to Survivors, and was a keen supporter of anyone researching the history of the series. In 1988, Worth was interviewed by Andrew Pixley and Anthony McKay for Timescreen magazine, and discussed the full breath of his work on genre television, including but not limited to Survivors.

In the mid-1990s, he was interviewed by Kevin Marshall during his research for his self-published tome The Making of Terry Nation’s Survivors, and appeared as one of the panelists for the Survivors session at the ‘Dreamwatch 94’ convention, chaired by Marshall, which was one of the first public reunions of cast-and-crew to discuss the series ever held. In December 2006, Worth appeared as one of the interviewees in BBC Four’s The Cult of…Survivors retrospective documentary on the series (also appearing in the Doomwatch, The Onedin Line and Poldark episodes).

When Andy Priester and myself were writing The End of the World?: The Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to Survivors, we sadly did not have the opportunity to interview Martin Worth. It was not until 2010 that I was fortunate enough to arrange to meet with him for a fascinating afternoon of discussion about his work on both Doomwatch and Survivors. Worth had been unaware of the publication of our Survivors book, but was effusive and animated in his praise when I was able to provide a copy for him to read, and full of helpful comments and suggestions for a second, updated edition.

He remained convinced that uprooting the series at the close of series two had marked a premature death-knell for the show. Terence Dudley had, he charged:

made a mistake in allowing the survivors to succeed in getting the country organized again. Though it was fun to write, it effectively killed off the series. If we’d stayed with the community in Wales trying to get by through their own self-sufficiency, it could have gone on for many more seasons.

That is certainly an enticing and and intriguing prospect from one of the most accomplished and perceptive scriptwriters to have worked on the original Survivors.

* His ex-wife, Angela Wigglesworth wrote an obituary for Worth that was published in The Guardian (6 August 2018).

Survivors Big Finish series two reviews

Work on updating and extending the manuscript of the forthcoming new edition of The End of the World? The Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to Survivors has been taking priority over the last weeks… but reviews of each of the four episodes of series two of Big Finish’s Survivors audio adventures have now been published on the S:AWA Survivors Big Finish mini-site.

Big Finish - Survivors series two - front cover
Big Finish – Survivors series two – front cover

There are also exclusive series two interviews with Carolyn Seymour, Lucy Fleming, Ian McCulloch and John Banks.

The second series of Survivors audios is available from the Big Finish shop, along with all the other current entries in the range.

Survivors series two DVD studio day – ten years ago today

It is exactly ten years ago to-the-day (3 June 2004) that Lorna Lewis, Denis Lill, Pennant Roberts and Heather Wright were reunited at a studio in central London to record the ‘special features’ for the Survivors series two DVD release.

All of the participants in this reunion of series two Survivors personnel provided individual on-camera interviews recalling their time working on the show, much of it based in and around Callow Hill (‘Whitecross’) near Monmouth in Herefordshire.

In addition, Lill and Roberts provided a genuinely fascinating audio commentary on the episode Lights of London Part II; the second-half of a unique two-part Survivors story. The assembled Survivors alumni also made themselves available for interviews with journalists from the cult and genre press to promote the forthcoming release.

The commercial success of the Survivors series two DVD release ensured that DD Entertainment would exercise its option to release the third and final series of the original Survivors the following year, and agree, in the process, to fund the most extensive set of ‘special features’ seen on any of the three series DVD box-sets.

To mark the decennial anniversary of this event, we’re publishing a set of never-before-seen behind-the-scenes photos from the day.

It is a sad and sobering thought to remember that both Pennant Roberts and Lorna Lewis have been lost to us in the decade that has passed since these special features were recorded (alongside the death of several other key members of the series cast and crew): a fact which makes their recollections of the recording of the second series of Survivors all the more poignant to revisit.

Heather Wright, Lorna Lewis, Pennant Roberts and Denis Lill are reunited in the studio
Heather Wright, Lorna Lewis, Pennant Roberts and Denis Lill are reunited in the studio

Denis Lill and Pennant Roberts review Survivors series one DVD materials
Denis Lill and Pennant Roberts review Survivors series one DVD materials

Denis Lill during his on-camera interview
Denis Lill during his on-camera interview

Pennant Roberts poses for a press shot
Pennant Roberts poses for a press shot

Heather Wright poses for a publicity shot
Heather Wright poses for a publicity shot

Original scripts of The Face of the Tiger and Reunion for sale by auction bid

The Face of the Tiger
The Face of the Tiger

Survivors‘ scriptwriter Don Shaw is selling his personal copy of his Survivors scripts for his series two episode The Face of the Tiger and series three story Reunion.

These are the scriptwriter’s copies of the shooting script for each episode, kept in Don’s personal archive since 1976 and 1977.

The scripts for The Face of the Tiger and Reunion are being sold separately, and independent offers (with an opening price for each script of £250) are invited. Each script is in very good condition and will be signed by Don. An additional handwritten message can be added to either script at the buyer’s request.

In the past couple of years, Don has sold a signed copy of one of his Doomwatch scripts for more than £200, while a copy of an signed script from his contribution to the Hammer House of Horror anthology sold for more than £400. Last year, Don sold his personal copy of his script for his series three Survivors episode Mad Dog.

If you are interested in making a bid on either the The Face of The Tiger or Reunion scripts, please submit your bid via the contact form on the Survivors: A World Away site, by the end of Wednesday 19 March. (Please note, the Survivors: A World Away site is just helping Don to get word out to Survivors‘ fans about this offer – and will not receive a penny from any sale). Remember to indicate which script you are bidding on (or if you are making separate bids for both).

If no suitable offers are received directly from the Survivors fan community (which is receiving first sight of the sale), then the script will be listed in open auction on eBay.

Reunion
Reunion

UPDATE (1 April 2014): As a result of the auction, the script for The Face of the Tiger was purchased by a member of the Survivors fan community. As with the previous successful sale of his personal script copy of Mad Dog, Don Shaw was pleased that the script was acquired by a dedicated Survivors fan. No successful bids were received for the script for Reunion, so this item will be listed for open auction on the eBay site shortly. A further update will follow once the Reunion script has been listed on eBay.