If two hours of The Book of Eli or The Road didn’t satisfy your taste for post-apocalyptic survival, there’s 12 more hours of it coming to television. BBC America starts airing Survivors this month and it’s certainly my cup of tea, pun intended.
The first episode covers the viral outbreak. I was a little impatient, preferring to start with the aftermath, but it was worth 45 minutes or so to set up the different parts of the ensemble. There’s a school, a prison, a government crisis center and they all end up playing specific roles once there’s about one survivor from each. The ones you think will be important might only be supporting players when it all shakes up.
It also lets you see a little bit of the chaos before surviving. You see the fight for gas pumps and the overrun ER. They also debate whether it’ll be worth surviving, like The Road. Lest the debate remain: it’s worth surviving so we can watch your kick-ass exploits in the remaining world.
The symptoms of the virus are real enough to be gross. I mean, lumps in the armpit, ewwww. Oh, and because they’re British, they call shots “jabs.” They also have tea instead of coffee. It’s actually kind of odd to see a whole post-apocalypse inhabited by people with accents. You’d think 28 Days Later would have prepared me for this, but it’s a whole new world.
All the set-up happens before the end of the extended first episode, so it’s not too drawn out. People deal with it in all the different ways: calmly, panicking, angry. They make the dead extras go around too. That really sells it. They may only have a few people to lie around a shot, but they cut it together to seem like the whole world.
The questions it asks in the aftermath are practical and fascinating. What still works? The water? The power? Then you get a little bit of I Am Legend in different areas, lone people roaming the city and suburbs. There are some good shots of empty London. Hardcore things happen. They have to search dead bodies. They have to relearn the basics. People who don’t belong together are forced into mismatched relationships. They have some fun in the emptiness too, so it’s not all dour.
Episode two is where I really get my jollies. It’s all about finding the supplies and what can happen when everything is up for grabs. They make supermarket runs but nothing is free. Having to raid houses is the real stuff. It made me think, there’s a difference between viral apocalypse and Armageddon apocalypse. With a medical one, all our stuff is still here. The other way, it’s just a wasteland. Two different types of fun.
The exploration of wannabe capitalists in that episode is interesting. Later, the idea of people moving from mansions to caves is interesting. So is the portrayal of how attempts to rebuild society create more problems.
There is a lot of action. Each episode seems to have a set piece or two. They may be more intimate beats on a TV scale, but that’s the interesting stuff we don’t get to see in large scale movies. There’s a car fire and explosion in episode four that looks really badass. Odd then that an explosion in the premiere is lame, but you’re with the characters so you go with it.
The part I care the least about is the evil conspiracy science lab. So far they just pop up for a tag at the end. I know it’ll be a more central plot thread but that’s the sort of fake narrative attached to it all. At least there are several episodes of pure survival before we get into that, so it won’t ruin the fun.
The 12 episode season of Survivors premieres Saturday, February 13, 8:00p.m. ET/PT - subsequent episodes premiere at 9:00p.m. ET/PT.
