Survivors - 7 Starvation

The opening shot of the daffodils I felt was a needless and less effective repeat of the bit with Abby and the snowdrops in ep 4. But then I was given false hope by the haircut scene. Like the battery shaver in the station scene that ep 5 begins with, it's aiming to answer our questions about how the protagonists manage to appear so well-groomed after the collapse of civilisation.

I like to have my questions answered, and I like world-building, and I don't mind if an episode wastes time in narrative terms to do those things. But this ep also spends a lot of time taking us nowhere, and unlike any of the previous ones, long stretches of it are devoid of any menace, particularly the bit where Jenny and Greg spend hours holed up in the minibus thanks to a very docile pack of feral dogs. Especially given that they were fully prepared to drive straight through them the first time they encountered them.

Such tension as there was in this ep was coming from the newly returned Tom Price, but then it's turned into comedy when he gets locked in the back of his van. If Abby and Wendy's reaction had had an edge of hysterical relief, in the way that your reaction would when something funny happened after the apocalypse, I would have bought it. But no.

I said in the previous article that the intensity seemed to be wearing off, and that was even more the case with this ep. Wendy took me right out of the situation, her clothing choice of a dress and sandals for post-collapse foraging on a damp day in early March actually made me cross. Almost nothing she did or said convinced me that she was living in a dystopia.

I didn't think the big house worked either, it was far too neat and tidy. And the meal scene had none of the warmth of the one in episode 4. I'm sure everyone was trying their best, but it just felt like a group of actors in a big echoey room at a stately home location.

One thing that did strike a chord, if you'll excuse the expression, about that though, was when Greg is asked what he's going to play on the guitar, and he says 'Nothing seems to fit any more.' That's something I've felt about the current coronavirus emergency, which - for those who've just joined us - is my constant viewing companion. Neither have I found any music to go with that. It seems too serious somehow.