Juno and the Hancock

One of the playlets in the Hancock episode The Drama Festival is John Eastbourne's Look Back in Hunger, where Bill Kerr delivers a monologue about tea with the splendidly delivered mocking line '"Have a cup of tea, Jim."'

That's very Osborne, but the rest of the speech ('Tea, tea? Is that your answer to it all') is much more Sean O'Casey. 'Tay, tay, tay! You're always thinking of tay. If a man was dying, you'd try to make him swallow a cup of tay.'

The Power of Eel

As a child I was very fond of Arthur Ransome's books about polite 30s children exploring and sailing, even though I barely knew one end of a boat from the other.

I've been re-reading them lately. There's a later entry, Secret Water, which takes place on the salt-marshes in Essex, and has a climactic scene where they chant and dance around a 'human sacrifice' to the Great Eel.

I wonder if Robert Holmes read it as a kid, and it unconsciously influenced another story set in a marsh and involving a giant water creature. Incidentally the swamp scenes in Power of Kroll were filmed only 25 miles away from Hamford Water where the book is set.

Bilbo's treasure

Bilbo asked Dáin for as many coins as one strong pony could carry, and they were half gold and half silver by volume - one chest of coins of each type.

(Shrewd move, much better deal than an equal number of coins of each type, gold being 1.84 times denser than silver. Though it occurs to me now that if one chest was on each side of the pony, the load would have been very unbalanced).

Ponies can carry 20% of their own weight.

Pony weight range 130-350kg, so let's say a strong one weighs 300kg and could carry 60kg.

So Bilbo brought home 60kg of coins, divided 1.84/2.84 and 1/2.84 between gold and silver respectively. That's 38.4kg of gold and 21.6kg of silver.

Now, our sole monetary standard in Middle-earth in the Third Age is that a clapped-out pony (again with the ponies) costs 4 silver pennies.

Tolkien had a lot of time for the Anglo-Saxons and was doubtless thinking of their silver pennies, weighing 1/240 of a troy pound (373g) = 1.55g.

So Bilbo's 21.6kg of silver was 13,935 silver pennies.

Let's say a clapped-out, but still driveable car costs £1000, so 1 silver penny ≈ £250, so the silver was worth £3.5 million.

For most of history gold was worth ≈ 10 times as much as silver.

The 38.4kg of gold would be 24,774 pennyweights (although Tolkien probably imagined it in the chunky 4g gold pieces current in the silver penny era, ie ≈ 9600 gold pieces, that doesn't affect our calculation) each worth £2500, total value £62 million.

So, Bilbo brought back to Bag End the equivalent of £65 million. Enough to buy quite a few fancy waistcoats.

Joe Orton and SF

To go with Orton's Doctor Who links, I found another genre connection lurking in the Diary where I'd previously failed to spot it.

On July 18th 1967 he does a photoshoot for Queen magazine - a group of celebrity 'goodies' to be contrasted with another group of baddies. With him amongst the goodies is Lucy 'Survivors' Fleming.

She was also in the Avengers ep Invasion of the Earthmen. We know Orton and Halliwell were watching The Avengers in 1966, because Kenneth Williams mentions it. Sadly though, Invasion of the Earthmen didn't complete production till after Orton was dead.

Little Women/Good Wives

I've just learnt that Good Wives is a purely British way of referring to vol 2 of Little Women. I wonder though what accounts for the textual differences between GW and vol 2 of the two-volume version?

So for example, in the opening scene of the one-volume Little Women, Jo examines the heels of her boots in a gentlemanly manner while urging her sisters to spend their money as they wish, whereas in the two-volume version, it's the heels of her shoes.

Susie Brann's Harpoon voice

Listening to the 1962 Carleton Hobbs adaptation of Thor Bridge, I find one Beryl Calder playing Grace Dunbar, with a voice that's uncannily similar to the posh 30s one Susie Brann deploys in The Harpoon. I wonder if that's where the latter modelled it from?

Miss Blennerhassett

Miss Blennerhassett in the Penrith tearoom in Withnail & I. I'm wondering if her unusual name was suggested by a nine days' wonder in 1933, the libel case Blennerhassett v Novelty Sales Services Ltd and another. I came across it in an interesting book about libel cases - Hatred, Ridicule or Contempt, by Joseph Dean (1953) - and this blog has saved me the trouble of typing it all out for you. There's a picture of the advert complained of, too.

Survivors: You drink what they drink

The official pre- and post-apocalypse healthy drinking programme:

whisky (2 - you leave the second glass undrunk while you lie in bed for 5 days)

bottle of tonic water (don't look in the mirror)

champagne (warm)

Black & White whisky (straight out of the bottle)

Black & White whisky (straight out of the bottle - while you have your broken legs fixed)

vodka and tonic with ice

Glenfiddich (straight out of the bottle)

Elderflower wine ('last summer...')

Hey clarse brandy (for aristocrat use only)

Brandy or maybe a liqueur - can't tell, Charmian has her hand over the label

Glenfiddich

Some 70s beer which I would have recognised back in the day

Glenfiddich (out of the bottle)

'Scottish' whisky (in paper cups - have another)

Aristocrat-grade brandy again

Champagne (Moet - out of a bucket of water which I suppose might cool it a little bit, but probly not enough :anne:)

'Grape' wine (you'll be amused by its presumption) - about half a bottle I think, possibly more, there's a demijohn full of it as well

More grape wine, just 1 glass this time it looks like

Wine again - probably the grape wine from before (toast: 'Civilisation' 'All of us')

Not just brandy but cognac, Rémy Martin ('for a special occasion, for a bigger world, better days')

Brandy or maybe a liqueur ('FINE' on the label)

Cheap-looking pre-plague branded red wine, giving me a headache just looking at the label

More of the above

What looks like Charles' 'grape' wine again (sipped while you stand urbanely in front of a fireplace, like you probably used to pre-plague)

The same again I think (at least one glass each, and then 'is there any more wine, Pet?' 'Is there?')

Another glass of 'grape' wine (just casually in the kitchen as if it's no big deal; you've got engineering to think about)

More glasses of 'grape' wine out of a pottery jug in the white house ?Friday evening, while drunkenly singing the rude versions of hymns

Old reliable grape wine, in the white house kitchen

Grape wine out of a bottle while staggering through the woods with hymn books

Communion wine (off-screen)

Fascist home-made wine with lunch (a white wine for a change - and a whole bottle for you and partner)

Gale beer (in rather small glasses)

Bathtub gin (out of a jam jar)

Beer, elderflower wine and bathtub gin (toast: 'The future' - the gin btw by mistake for wine, getting you so drunk you have to stop playing the guitar and be propositioned by Pet)

Medicinal spirits furnished by Pet (Bell's whisky I think, can't be sure though)

What looks like home-made red wine

Something that Hubert nicked that tastes like gin

Sherry, judging by the glasses and the refill - have another

Wine for those that like it, but mostly beer, at least 5 pints, and another offered (in a proper pub as if the plague never happened. Toast: Iechyd da!)

Whisky (a dram before lunch)

Red wine (I presume with dinner, because lunch was fish)

Red wine (by candlelight, which is at last a choice again)

Survivors closing remarks

At the end of series 1 I was in two minds about whether to carry on watching because I didn't think the show would be much good without Abby. But Charles stepped into the gap - he was equally interesting because he had more flaws and inner conflicts. I actually began fancying him in series 3, up till then only Greg had held my attention in that way.

Jenny develops quite well. I do like the ways she's become hardened without ceasing to be herself. In 1.3 she can't bring herself to use the gun outside the supermarket, during series 2 John reports that 'Jenny fell over' when she fired a gun, but by series 3 she's unhesitatingly opening fire at Col Clifford's men and telling Charles 'shoot it in the eyes' when they find the trapped pig.

Put it this way, if I'd wandered up to one of the settlements and joined them, I'd take care not to let Jenny see that I found Greg attractive. I don't want to get shot in the eyes.

Series 2 was good, I liked the Whitecross ensemble but they didn't make enough of Ruth, and it trailed off a bit towards the end before reviving with Over The Hills and then the astonishing appearance of the balloon.

Series 3 I found very disappointing and badly connected. There were one or two good episodes in there, and the conclusion was - adequate. I have been much worse pleased with the final episodes of things.

What did impress me was that they managed to keep me with them even though the theme had changed. In series 1 it was mainly about the breakdown, the aftermath, scavenging and foraging. And when I got to the end of series 1 I said that that was what interested me and I'd been less engaged by the self-sufficiency theme which is beginning to emerge.

But I did get engaged by that theme in series 2. By the time we got to the end I wanted to stay with Whitecross and see them make it succeed. And I didn't really want to buy into the emerging theme about reconnecting communities and restarting technological civilisation and preventing malign forces from seizing control of it.

Yet again though they managed to engage me - though with less success this time, series 3 was much less cohesive than the other two, some of the episodes had very little connection to the main arc at all.

I only started watching this because I was trying to deal with the start of the coronavirus crisis. I'm glad I did, it's been a transformative experience which has helped me to face up to my fears. Thank you, survivors.

Survivors - 3.12 Power

The survivors reach Scotland, and we learn some startling things about what's been happening north of the border. The death ratio is only 90% (500 times lower than in England) so the Scots now outnumber the English 15:1.

Basically Charles and Macallister, the 'laird', argue back and forth about who owns the hydroelectric power, and about whether this is really the time for nationalism, while evil Sam from ep 3.9 tries to sabotage the whole project. Alec is disheartened by the nationalist quarrelling, but Jenny argues that, while bare survival was endurable when it was the only option, it won't be if they know they needn't be living that way. 'Let there be light,' says Alec as he pulls the big switch.

The closing scene shows Macallister and his chatelaine turning off their dining room lights and sitting down to dine by candlelight. I suppose the moral is that their experiences have taught them that, while they've got electricity again, they needn't be dependent on it. But of course it's all right for them. They live in a stately home with people bringing them, as Macallister says, salmon and whisky and oatcakes. I bet they haven't spent the last 3 years living in cars and looting supermarkets and struggling to raise crops and making soap out of mutton fat and dying from flu. If that's how I'd spent the last 3 years, I think I'd keep the lights on while I ate.

The writer has a lot of fun with the Scotland/England scenario. Charles accuses Macallister of planning to hold the English to ransom, and he replies 'How could you afford a ransom?'. Later Macallister says he'll consider Charles as his Secretary of State for England.

Jenny gets to dress up nicely again, and wash her hair, disconcerting Hubert with her new appearance.

Macallister exposits that the Scottish islands weren't affected by the plague at all. Though of course the idea of plague-free pockets of civilisation was raised and dismissed in ep 1.5 - the premise then was that if any of the survivors visited such a pocket, they'd give everyone there the plague. But we're a long way from Terry Nation's ideas now.

Jenny inexplicably chooses not to come and live in Scotland. What's the matter with her? After my remarks about the previous episode, it's oddly fitting that Survivors ends by holding up Scotland as the promised land.

Survivors - 3.11 Long Live The King

A lot has been happening since the previous episode. After some initial manoeuvring we discover Agnes in paramilitary uniform hoping to set up a currency and national council in Greg's name. As Agnes points out, it doesn't matter whether the currency is really backed by a million gallons of petrol any more than whether it mattered the Bank of England could have really paid out everyone who held its notes. For a fiat currency to work, people just need to believe in it.

And bringing forward the currency first is a clever writing move, because it prepares for the larger step that, because people met Greg in the past and trusted him, it doesn't matter whether he's still alive or not, which is good because he is revealed to be dead, though that wasn't difficult to guess from the beginning.

The bombastic GP posters and badges, and the flag with GP on it, are quite clever too, they seem very ridiculous, but they're meant to be over the top, they're deliberate propaganda to create a self-fulfilling prophecy of stability.

The world was ravaged by the plague and since then the survivors have coped with typhoid and flu and smallpox. But they also appear to be extraordinary susceptible to fascism, this must be the 5th or 6th time we've had people calling for order and strong leadership (from them). I think it's a bit cheap to push all this onto Agnes just because she's blonde and Nordic.

The Captain (namechecked in the previous ep) is in this to show us that one danger of order and strong leadership is that they can be hijacked by gangsters. But in person he doesn't present the threat that he should. Why is he up and walking around if he's had smallpox for weeks anyway? Remember how ill Dr Adams was at that stage. And no-one reacts with alarm to his pustules.

Jenny has some metatextual lines. 'I'm sick and tired of these everlasting changes of plan. It's always the same' and 'Greg isn't here. Again.' She's as fed up with series 3 as we are.

There's a freeze frame when the episode title caption comes up shortly after the start. That hasn't been done before - though the delay between the start of the episodes and the caption has been very variable, it takes over a minute in some cases.

Some of these themes are to be found in David Brin's 1985 novel The Postman, in which a post-apocalyptic wanderer puts on a discarded US Postal Service uniform and finds he's accidentally created a self-fulfilling prophecy of restored order. Don't watch the film of it though, it's shit.

'We're supposed to be going to Scotland, aren't we.' It's interesting that - the coronavirus having delayed my own plans to head north - I should have found myself having second thoughts about going after seeing the English countryside so much on display in Survivors. And even more interesting that as series 3 comes to an end, my resolve should return when I find one of the subplots is about a quest to reach Scotland.

Dating: Charles says that Agnes last reported seeing Greg 'weeks ago'. Possibly referring to the events of the previous ep.

Survivors - 3.10 The Last Laugh

Really harrowing episode in three acts. Firstly a series of misdirections regarding the true nature of Mason and his friends, and what was going on with Dr Adams. Then the conversation Greg has with Adams about death, which succeeded in making me cry real tears. Then Greg's plan to lure Mason into being infected, which requires him to shower abuse on his friends. My notes here just say 'Fucking hell Greg.'

Greg does give his friends two clues to what's happening, though; the Norwegian phrase he says to Agnes, which she explains, and the one about following in the footsteps of Paul, which Jack misinterprets. Greg means Paul Pitman not St Paul.

I'd spoilered myself on Greg catching smallpox, but I didn't see it coming in this episode. I'm really sorry he's dying, I've come to feel a great affection for him over the last 34 episodes. McCulloch really succeeds in selling me him. I wasn't sure what to make of him at first, wisecracking to his dead wife about how he thought she'd stay alive just to spite him, but he doesn't put a foot wrong after that, everything he does I find believable and admirable.

Resisting Anne's blandishments, accepting Abby as titular 'boss' provided he can get on with the tech stuff, being there for Abby and Jenny during that first winter, drawing his execution straw in Law and Order, dealing with the guilt afterwards without complaining, being the family man with Jenny and Lizzie and John and baby Paul. Rest in power Greg.

That's a good line Dr Adams has about if you're afraid of death, think of how you'd like to die, then pray for it to happen that way. I'm a hoper, not a pray-er, but I'll try that. Goodness knows I need it at the moment.

At least Greg gets to drink coffee again one more time. I think I'd miss coffee more than alcohol after the apocalypse. Carrot tea indeed.

Dating: Adams speaks of winter coming, but I suppose he might mean the previous year.

Survivors - 3.9 The Enemy

For the first time on their travels our friends come to the equivalent of an inn. It's kind of nice to see Charles standing by the coal fire in the bar, doubtless remembering pre-collapse pub visits. 'Iechyd da,' he says authentically when served a fresh pint.

But he goes on to try to manipulate Jenny into sleeping with Alec so that he'll stay and fix the locals' generator. The argument they have about Greg while playing bar billiards was surreal, I thought maybe Charles was hallucinating, or perhaps I was. Jenny ends up shockingly calling him a Welsh bastard in front of everyone. I wonder, would he have had her thrown out of Whitecross if she'd said that while they were there.

Mind you, they're all at it - Charles refers to Alec as MacSporran and we learn that Jenny has been making Tartan Army references.

Sam the ex-junkie, saved by the plague is an interesting character. First he's just painted as very right-wing, then he turns out to be resentful and mad, intent on sabotaging the hydroelectric mission. The first time we've had a sort of anti-survivor plot.

It's a splendid moment when the generator starts and the light-bulb comes on. At the end the pithead wheels are turning again. But that made me think of the last line of the last of the Changes books - 'And the air would soon be reeking of petrol.'

Sam uses the same expression 'US' (unserviceable?) that Winser does in Claws of Axos.

Jenny comes in to nurse Frank and asks him how he's feeling. 'Is that a proposition?' he asks. As Adrian Mole said of Bert Baxter once, 'sometimes he is just a dirty old man who doesn't deserve visitors.'

Dating: Charles says it was last month that Jenny was back at Challenor. Does he mean in 3.6? Did they go back there after the half-way meeting, or is he referring to an off-screen visit between episodes?

He also says it's been 3 years [since the plague]. He probably means this is the third calendar year since it happened.

Survivors - 3.8 Sparks

I didn't like this episode very much. It's the first one that I've decided I won't bother to re-watch. The dear old fascist lady is a bit of a hard sell for me I'm afraid.

Jenny is the best thing in it, having to deal with Frank manipulating her into impersonating Alec's wife to get him through drug-induced emotional catharsis. Alec being the guilt-ridden electrical engineer who they set off to find at the end of the last ep. I wish they'd done more 'angry Jenny' scenes in the earlier series. Mind you, she had her stroppy moments in series 1, arguing with Dr Tyler in ep 1 and kicking the boxes around in ep 2.

I love it when any of the survivors eat out in the open with a knife in one hand, I think it must be some kind of latent class resentment of my own coming to the surface, seeing people like them forced into such uncouth behaviour.

First cat in Survivors I think. Charles opined in 1.4 that they were all dead.

Alec is the 4th Scottish survivor. 'What's wrong with Scotland?' What indeed.

Dating: they met Brod 'a couple of months ago' so it can't be March any more, thank god, it must be May. But then it's already been May in 3.5.

Survivors - 3.7 The Peacemaker

Jenny said that she wouldn't leave Paul again. Yet here she is roaming round the countryside again with Charles and Hubert. I thought for a moment I'd got the episodes in the wrong order.

It's a good episode this though, lots of cunning misdirection before we find out what's really going on at the mill. Who's the evil one? Is it surly Henry, saintly-seeming Frank, or Rutna with her sitar cue? The twist is that it's none of them and nothing sinister is happening, rather like in ep 3.1. Henry's display of peacemaking with the gunmen is quite impressive.

There's another good reveal too, that Frank has a pacemaker which might give out at any time. It's a good post-apocalyptic plot idea, but it's a terrible pun with 'peacemaker'. Do you think it was deliberate?

Hubert's back on comic relief as he gets to literally roll in the hay with Blossom.

'Contains strong language reflecting attitudes of the time' - Hubert drops 'wog' and 'darkie' twice each. On the other hand, Blossom exposits about Asian women being targeted during the initial plague panic, for supposedly bringing the plague here. Surely such a thing would never happen...

The sitar cue. On one occasion we see her actually playing a sitar, but on two others it's definitely non-diegetic. Which is the first use of incidental music so far, unless you count the times when they bring up the closing theme early.

Charles has trouble recognising the aroma of curry because he's forgotten about it. Nice.

A third Scottish person has survived the apocalypse.

Dating: it's 9 months since Greg left, so in theory it's still March. Pet does have a woolly hat and gloves on when she's using the phone. But it's been a busy March for the survivors if that's still the month.

Survivors - 3.6 Reunion

Interesting bit at the beginning of this ep where, just for a moment, it looks like Charles doesn't want them to bother rescuing Hubert's friend. Which is possibly why Hubert is later talking about how people are still 'behaving as if they had money.' He does get further elevated out of the comic relief category in this ep, which is good, it was a bit uncomfortable having him grousing but being useful in the background all the time.

Good to see Jack and Pet again, I was beginning to wonder if we ever would. The plan for them to drive out and meet the others had me clutching my head though, don't these people ever learn?

To make up for the continued Greg teasing, we're given the reunion between John and his mother. I did like the scene where they arrive back at his old home, and all our friends who've been looking after him for the last couple of years are watching anxiously to see how he reacts. 'Where's my pony?'

Janet has beautifully manicured nails for a post-apocalyptic vet.

Jenny finally mentions her baby Paul again. And indeed is reunited with him.

Dating: there are daffodils on the table at Challenor, so the suggestion is that it's still March or April. But really more time must have passed than that, to accommodate the action since ep 3.3. Btw I'm not and haven't been drawing any clues from the weather and foliage seen on location, because obviously they can't choose those, whereas of course the table flowers are a different matter.

John was due home from his granny's the day after the foot and mouth disease broke out at home, and the foot and mouth was a month before the plague. He was at prep school so that day must have been during the holidays, and at least a few days before term started, perhaps longer. Private schools have slightly later term starts than normal ones, but the autumn term would probably still have started in the first half of September, so the plague would have been in the first half of October. Unless he was away for half term, which would put it at the end of November. But I think that's less likely. You wouldn't send a kid miles away to his grandmother's, and also plan time at home for him afterwards, with just a week to play with. So on that basis the date when ep 1.1 starts might be Mon Oct 6 or 13. That's 2-3 weeks earlier than the earliest possibility suggested by almost the other clues so far.

Furthermore. Janet talks about her horse show activities in 1973. So obviously the plague must have been no earlier than 1973. I get the idea that the production team thought the plague was in 1974, but I'm sticking to 1975 because the autumn outbreak of the plague would then have been in the future when series 1 was broadcast in April.

Survivors - 3.5 Bridgehead

There are three main kinds of Survivors ep:

1. Aberrant settlement of the week/extrication
2. Trouble at their own settlement
3. World-building

and this is a world-building one. Not much happens but people have conversations in picturesque places that tell you more about the survivors' world.

Basically Charles has a rare success in successfully managing to hold a market day where people trade their surpluses. And we get teased yet again with the prospect of Greg returning.

I haven't encountered so many railway references in SF since I read Colin Kapp's The Railways Up On Cannis as a kid.

I've realised what's bothering me about Edith and her sons - up to now I don't think any of the survivors have been related to one another. Charles said in 1.4 that it hadn't happened in his experience. But here we have 4 members of the same family still alive. That was kind of the point of the show for me, that it was about disparate people randomly thrown together and forming bonds, not just a post-apocalyptic The Waltons.

Jenny has displayed a remarkable absence of concern about baby Paul in this series, it's almost as if she and the writers have forgotten he ever existed. I suppose we are to assume that he and John and Lizzie 2 are still being looked after by Pet.

Dating: Brother Tom left the farm 3 months ago, and ISTR in 3.3 he'd left a month ago, so it must now be round about May 1978.

Survivors - 3.4 Mad Dog

Excellent episode. Richard Fenton PhD saves Charles from a pack of dogs, one of which may or may not have given Charles rabies. He and Fenton have an interesting discussion over the next two days, some of it on horseback in a snowstorm - continuing the Game of Thrones theme. Charles' drive to rebuild versus Fenton's nihilism. This is really good, because you can see Fenton is getting to him. Charles must have had many moments of secret doubt that his dreams were achievable.

Then there's a sudden key change where Fenton develops rabies and has to be shot by his neighbours, who then turn on Charles and hunt him across country in order to kill him before he becomes contagious. Gripping stuff. And then in possibly the most unexpected twist so far, Charles escapes by steam train, morale restored. 'Steam for survival!'

I've seen this criticised online, and I bet it wouldn't have happened if Terry Nation had stayed in charge, but it's not beyond the realm of possibility for people to be able to get a steam engine working on a preserved railway.

Lovely shot of the sunset through the window of the empty 'halfway house' as Charles and Fenton arrive.

Another voiceover when Charles is reading Fenton's notes.

Fenton has the last Times ever printed - 'inflation reaches 28%'.

'Since when do people shake hands?' - not in the last 3 weeks...

Survivors - 3.3 Law of the Jungle

One of the two classic patterns for Survivors episodes is for our friends to get into a sticky situation with the aberrant settlement of the week, and then to extricate themselves, with varying degrees of difficulty. This is one of the stickiest, as villain of the week Brod is more determined than usual for them not to escape.

Charles describes him as 'like a robber baron from a fairy tale' and there's something weirdly Game of Thrones about him and the way he's corrupted Edith's two sons. Luckily for the survivors, he's also got a massive class-based chip on his shoulder which impairs his judgement, and if that wasn't bad enough, he's also impotent. Jenny goes about to seduce him. 'I have to pretend to fancy him,' she explains earnestly to Charles.

Hubert - who isn't one of the targets of Brod's class issues - elevates himself out of the comic relief category by cutting the Gordian knot: he shoots him and pretends it was an accident.

Jenny's experiences seem to have hardened her: she shot that man in 3.1, and in this one she peremptorily tells Charles to kill the trapped pig. 'With a shotgun?' he asks. 'Shoot it through the eyes!' she says impatiently. I don't like seeing Brod hit her though.

Brian Blessed is great as Brod - there are some odd shifts of tone in the episode, but Blessed makes them seem plausible. Like when Brod suddenly starts ranting about his wife running away with a tax inspector. They're literally on a train to nowhere after the apocalypse, and what's bothering him is her fancy man's job.

Road signs being used as archery targets. Very Threads.

The feral dogs in series 3 are a much more convincing threat than the ones in series 1.

Copy of Middlemarch treasured by Edith. Poignant.

Geography: Charles repeats the thing from series 2 about their settlement being in the West Country. A search shows that that term is sometimes meant to include Herefordshire.

Dating: it's 8 months since Jenny last saw Greg, so it's now approximately March 1978. (As previously, we don't know what the year is, but for brevity's sake I'm continuing to assume the plague struck in late 1975).

Survivors - 3.2 A Little Learning

Another bubble episode that doesn't progress the main story, apart from the teases about whether Jenny and Greg will actually meet up. When she kept missing Abby in 1.1 and 1.2 I cared, but I don't care about this, because it's being played for laughs.

The self-sufficient group of kids is a familiar trope but their leader Eagle's powerful Glaswegian manner makes it work. With Nessie the nurse in Lights of London, that's two Scottish people who've survived the plague. Greg's initial scene with the kids is good, both funny and sinister.

The two traders are played half the time as vicious, hardened rogues and the other half as mere cheeky chappies, the inconsistent tone makes it hard to believe in them. One of them's doing a really odd posh 40s accent. Also the plan to get Jenny to stay by telling her that Greg is having it off with Agnes is beyond tedious. You're writing about people after the collapse of civilisation and that's the story you want to tell?

The last 5 minutes are really strange, first the sudden raising and dismissal of the minefields, and then the surreal appearance of a wandering elephant.

One good moment though, where Greg has just euthanased Libbie and he tells Eagle that she died in her sleep - and then discovers that she was Eagle's sister.

Couple of unusual references to pre-plague culture - the kids sing Yellow Submarine, and also Greg pointedly remarks that they should have watched fewer violent films and more BBC2.