Survivors has made it to a second series, with decent enough ratings in the first 2 episodes to mean that it will probably be picked up for a third. I have been watching it since the beginning, intrigued by the concept behind the show (killer virus decimates the population, only a handful of people survive), but I have been seriously disappointed with the show, and only continue watching in the hope that it will get better.
Let's get it straight first of all: it's not a bad show by any stretch of the imagination - the concept is pretty strong, and it has some interesting ideas running through the series. For instance, the different types of communities which are being built up by the
disparate groups of survivors is pretty well done, and it doesn't lurch into "liberal issue of the week" mode all that often. The acting is passable, the majority of the characters believable, and it has
just enough intrigue to keep you waiting for the next episode.
It's an OK TV show. But that's as much as you can say about it. I think the problem is that my expectations of what a series can do, and what it should be about have been raised by The Wire. Actually, not even just The Wire; Lost, for example, helped to raise the bar of what a TV series can be by having long running stories spread across the whole series, with different groups of people being introduced before they actually "interact" with the main group, and with the motivations of those characters being fully realised and shown to the viewer.
This is not the case with Survivors, where characters beyond the main group are merely cyphers to move the plot ever-onwards. They are introduced for an episode, have a bit of plot exposition with the main characters, then are written out at the end of the episode. The repetition of this device is jarring in the extreme, and especially so in the last episode, where we were saw for the first time the wife and child of the "evil scientist". This could have done an amazing amount for this character: it would have given light to the scientist, so that we know that he isn't just evil; we could have explored what it meant to him to discover the vaccine, we could have seen a human side to him. We could also have explored what it was like to be cooped up in a small lab, with no way of getting outside and knowing what was actually out there. Instead, we get the evil scientist still
doing his "evil" voice, even to his wife and child. We get the wife suddenly trying to escape, and then helping
Abby to escape. She is not developed. She does not develop a main character. She is there merely for plot, and nothing else.
The plots are also becoming more and more unbelievable, and form nothing more than pegs to hang a bit of set-piece casual violence and/or silent brooding from Max
Beesley. I accept that there has to be some suspension of disbelief to enable the drama to function, but the plot holes are getting ever larger, and more stupid. How can
Abby escape from a high security lab, and evade capture from a well-trained unit with trucks and helicopters, while she is just dressed in a surgical gown.
I guess I am comparing the series to what it could have been: they could easily have stretched the '
Abby missing' storyline over the whole series, with the resolution of them finding each other at the end of the series or something. Instead, it's almost as if the writers got bored with the idea, so decided to end it as quickly as possible.
The bar for TV series has been raised by
American studios, who have shown there is a mass audience who are more than capable of handling and enjoying multi-stranded, open-ended
story lines that last for the whole series (or longer). The BBC are so far behind the game that home-grown programmes look out of date before they have even finished airing.
