Survivors series 1 closing remarks

Of course it wasn't a coincidence that I chose to watch Survivors now. I wanted a way to face my fears about civilisation collapsing and I found one by identifying with Abby and Jenny as their civilisation did just that, leaving them to survive alone in an almost empty world.

Just put yourself in their place. Everyone you know is dead, the entire way of life you're used to is gone forever. You're walking across country in a furry coat or living in your car. It's so appalling that there's something liberating about it. When Abby burns her house down at the end of ep 1 I can entirely understand why she does it. Equally I know what they're feeling in ep 4, when they're carelessly ignoring the Give Way signs and casually saying things like 'Drop me at the next car.'

But that atmosphere doesn't last. Even in that scene Abby says 'That would be a silly way to die' - something I've often thought these last couple of weeks when walking into the road to maintain social distancing on the pavement - and soon they're having to deal on one hand with the local tyrants, madmen and corrupt heirs of authority we expect to find in all post-apocalypse stories, and on the other with trying to attain self-sufficiency. I admire the realism but I'm not as interested in it as I was in the breakdown itself and the immediate aftermath.

But watching Survivors has been a transformative experience for me.

Survivors 13 - A Beginning

I like the first 20 minutes of this, where Abby is preparing her friends to manage without her. She and Jenny get a scene together again, which I like, it takes me back to the first few eps. But it's used to imply that she's been harbouring a passion all along for Garland, the Geoffrey Household hero from episode 6, and off she goes to find him.

There's some foregrounding of the precariousness of a life without medicine, and it's discussed in one of the earlier eps too - 'How many doctors are there left in England? Twenty?'. This prepares us for the idea that, far from dumping a casualty on them, the nomads have left Abby's friends a priceless resource in the form of junior doctor Ruth.

I know about Ruth because I read some of the series 2 summaries, because I originally intended only to watch series 1 as I wasn't interested in Survivors if Abby wasn't going to be in it. But I've realised that what I liked about Abby was her indomitability and her achievement in surviving the first week on her own. If she finds Garland attractive then she isn't the woman I thought she was.

I did like her reaction during the argument with Greg, when he grabs her wrist and she stares furiously and fixedly - not at him, but at his grabbing hand. Don't mess with Abby.

She also gets a fine speech later on:

Whatever we do, however hard we work, there's no going back. What we've got now is what we'll have for the rest of our lifetimes.

Now that does ring true. She burnt her house down in ep 1 because she realised even then that there was no going back.

I think the blue zip-up bag she takes on her journey is the one Jenny used when she travelled out of London in eps 1 and 2.

This ep starts the day before the longest day of the year - June 21 1976 or June 20 1977. If that was the only data we had, it could just possibly still be 1976, if eps 10, 11 and 12 had all happened within days of each other. But, Greg says that Abby has been sulking for the last 6 weeks, and there has been time for the seed they traded the petrol for to prove itself 'sour'. 'Sour' seems from searches to mean that the seed has sprouted, like in The Mayor of Casterbridge; if that's so, then it would have been apparent almost immediately, but if it means that it wouldn't grow, then more time would have to have passed for them to have realised.

Furthermore, Greg says that their wheat crop 'isn't even in yet.' He might mean that they haven't harvested it yet - or that they haven't sown it yet. Farming forums suggest that wheat can in extreme cases be sown as late as the end of May or early June, but that still won't do - he must mean that it hasn't been harvested yet.

And he refers to the possibility of having 'another summer like last year', ie as bad as last year. It sounds like he means a previous year during which they were farming. He can't mean 1975, the year the plague happened, he was an oil engineer then, he didn't care what sort of farming weather there was.

So I think that nearly a year has passed since the previous episode, and it's now Jun 20 1977. [I thought that when I hadn't watched series 2. There is different evidence about this question in a later ep, which I won't mention here for fear of spoilering you]

How does Ruth's story fit with this? She went 'up and down the river' with Peggy the nurse for an unknown time before they met the barge people and stayed with them 3 months before she set off looking for sulphonamide drugs (antibiotics). Greg estimates she's been ill for a week so she must have left the barge in early June. There is a suspicion, isn't there, that that's designed to fit with the year still being 1976. Dr Warlock (Bronson) left the school some time after ep 1 (Oct/Nov 1975) and before ep 5 (Mar 1976), so if it is 1977 now, he and the boys and the others were on the barge for over a year before Ruth and Peggy encountered them as she cruised up and down the Thames. What a picture that evokes. Way Upstream but after civilisation has collapsed.

(Or alternatively - it will be remembered that Nancy Blackett's real name was Ruth, but as her sister Peggy relates, she called herself Nancy because Amazons were ruthless. Did Terry Nation have a post-apocalyptic Swallows and Amazons scenario on his mind?)

Perhaps there'll be further evidence in series 2 to resolve this question? [Indeed there was]

Survivors 12 - Something of Value

Once again everything is nice and peaceful at the settlement, which means that a calamity is surely about to befall it. Lawson is so obviously a wrong 'un that I'm once again left in despair at the naive trustfulness of Abby and her friends.

Actually, on this occasion it's really just Abby's fault: Jenny, Arthur and Paul all had their suspicions but she's happy to leave it till the morning.

There's also natural disaster - notice how we're set up to expect a fire rather than a flood - which destroys most of their crops and supplies, so they decide to trade the petrol in the tanker with the next settlement. But they don't send someone over there to negotiate, no, they drive their whole stock of 1000 gallons of petrol, worth far more than its weight in gold, across a post-apocalyptic landscape on spec.

This ep reminds me rather of ep 8, Spoils of War, in the way that the first act is largely 'strategic' (how are we going to survive the winter?) and then the second act abruptly shifts gear into 'tactical' mode (how do we stop Lawson and his pals taking the tanker?). It is a very tense and exciting act, but like with ep 8, it needn't be happening in a post-collapse world at all. In the Survivors milieu you don't have to have people stalking each other with guns to create tension. I start nervously wringing my hands whenever they leave a vehicle unattended.

Dating: Greg says that they can't hope to harvest a new grain crop for 2 months, and (*searches) wheat, barley and oats are all harvested Jul-Sep in Britain, suggesting that the date now is between June and July. The previous ep, I calculated, was Jun 20-Aug 1, and although Emma says the baby has grown, we can see she's still a very young baby. I'm not a baby expert but I don't think more than 2 months at the outside has elapsed since the previous ep. OTOH for her to have 'grown' I suppose at least 2 weeks must have passed. With this and the grain evidence, shall we say then that it is now somewhere between Jul 3 and Jul 31.

Survivors 11 - Revenge

Surely the jolly haymaking expedition at the start of this episode will be disrupted by marauders? Not in the way we expect... Re-enter Anne Tranter from episode 2. I love the awkwardness of the bit where she and Greg meet in the kitchen.

A really tense episode where we're constantly wondering exactly what form Vic's 'Revenge' will take. We're led to believe that it's shaming Anne at the supper table, but then there's an intense final sequence where he drags himself inch by inch upstairs to confront her. That confrontation is very strange, it cycles through him coming to kill her, her prepared to kill him, him begging her to do so, and then them both affirming in paraphrase what Abby says to the dying Angel in episode 5, 'God is survival.' And then they spend the night together.

I haven't made up my mind yet how I feel about that final sequence, I can't decide it if it was really powerful, really twisted, or really ridiculous.

Dating update: we're explicitly told that Greg last saw Anne [just before the end of ep 2] 6 months ago. Haymaking takes place between June and September apparently, and the previous episode (qv) is between June 15-July 27. Laura is said to have the baby blues (offscreen) so it may only be 5 days since she gave birth, so the date must be about Jun 20-Aug 1.

At face value that contradicts the dating in ep 2. I always assume 'n months' means 'plus or minus 2 weeks' so this would mean ep 2 can't have been earlier than early December, and may have been as late as mid-January. We previously established that the extreme latest date for ep 1 is Mon Dec 1, so that could fit, but anything later requires us to intersperse months of extra time into eps 2 and 3. To fit the most plausible date - Mon Oct 27 - we have to space out eps 2 and 3 with 5 weeks of unseen action. Yes, Tom Price needs more time to go to London and back than the other evidence allows, but that's the only support that this '6 months' thing has. All the other evidence is against it.

Vic also says that he was alone in the quarry for 4 months: we saw that ep 8 was Mar 15-31, and that puts ep 2 at Nov 15-30, and that sustains our ongoing assumption about ep 1 being late Oct/early Nov. (He says '3 or 4 months' in ep 8, but he's more definite here).

Btw, I always assumed haymaking was something you did after you harvested wheat. But it's a totally different process, you perform it on fields of grass, and you do it before the wheat harvest anyway.
And if I hadn't been hoping I could prove Terry Nation wrong, I'd never have looked it up and found that out. Who'd have thought that Terry would still be teaching me things in 2020?

Survivors 10 - The Future Hour

There's a familiar assumption that gold is the thing to have if society collapses, and an equally familiar response that medicine, tinned food and ammunition will be the only things with any value in that scenario. Enter Rohm Dutt with his own take on the issue: his investment approach could be described as 'extreme value', in that he thinks gold will be worth something again one day.

I like the incongruity of having someone who's basically a Minder villain in the Survivors setting, but once I'd finished chuckling over it, there wasn't much else for me to enjoy in this ep. I was interested to see the continuing portrayal of Abby of someone who's clever, but not quite as clever as she thinks; clever enough to give Rohm Dutt a carefully managed view of their community, but not clever enough to stop the children spilling the beans to his henchman.

I wonder though, can she really be so naive as not to have realised that Rohm Dutt might try to kill them all rather than just scare them? Didn't she learn anything from the unknown period of time she spent fending for herself before she met Greg and Jenny? Though of course I keep forgetting that this isn't Triffids, 99.98% of the original population are dead, she may indeed not have encountered anyone at all except Wormley and his group during that time.

The rest of the ep hardly need be a Survivors ep at all, it's just two groups skirmishing with each other till the very convenient conclusion, which gets rid of Rohm Dutt and Tom Price without anyone else getting killed. I can hardly believe Rohm Dutt's men wouldn't have shot Abby and everyone else rather than just turning their fire on Price. Perhaps they secretly didn't like working for him. Having said that, parts of the ep are very choppily edited so it's easy to get confused about what's happening.

Really I just wanted this to be over so that we could get back to world-building.

Abby's love of nicotine foregrounded: on finding Rohm Dutt's huge cache of Rothmans, and trying to persuade Greg to let him nick a few, Paul says 'Abby must have run out of fags by now.' (She was smoking at the party in the previous ep btw).

Dating: Laura was on her own for 6 weeks after the plague (referred to as the Death again here) before she met Rohm Dutt, and she implied that he noticed she was pregnant 'after 3 months'. If she means 3 months into the pregnancy, then she must have been pregnant for no more than 6 weeks before the plague broke out. She's giving birth now, so if the previous supposition is correct, it must be June 15th at the earliest, and if it isn't - she meant 3 months after she met Rohm Dutt - so she got pregnant just before the plague broke out - it's July 27th at the earliest.

Survivors 9 - Law and Order

This was really harrowing, and if anything, the fact that I'd accidentally spoilered myself on the identity of the culprit made it seem all the more grimly inevitable.

No dating question with this ep, because there's a May Day party. After which Tom Price drunkenly rapes and kills Wendy, and puts Barney in the frame, just as I'd read. But I wasn't expecting the trial which the community then conduct to be so tense and gripping. And it comes in three acts - verdict, sentence and execution.

The worst thing about it is that killing Barney is exactly what they would have done, and it's exactly what we would do too in their place. There's no way out of it - no-one gets to walk away from this Omelas.

And it's not over even then - Price confesses to Abby and Greg, and they realise they have to keep quiet about it, because they need him. Just imagine it. Not only are you living in a post-apocalyptic world, but you've trapped yourself in an appalling moral compromise.

Then when it finishes, I exit the media player and the BBC News Channel comes back on with a revised coronavirus death toll of 422. Just for fifty minutes I'd forgotten all about it.

This is the best episode, outside the opening 4, by a country mile so far.

Survivors - 8 Spoils of War

Very unevenly paced episode, the first act being a light-hearted treatment of Abby and her friends' attempts to begin farming, and the arrival of Paul with his helpful insights.
Interesting rumour mentioned by Tom Price that the 'Japs' have come up with a vaccine for the plague. A reference to how it's the ingenious Japanese who work out that ultrasound is the way to defeat the adversary in The Kraken Wakes? Then again, talk about shutting the stable door. 99.98% of the human race have already died.

Then the second act concerns the arrival of fund manager Arthur Russell and 'his secretary' Charmian. I know a point is being made here about the worthlessness of financial claims from the old world, but that point has already been made, with far greater elegance, in episode 1 with the bag of banknotes; and they're such a ridiculous pair that I can't believe in them at all. How are they supposed to have survived the last six months?

Also, Charmian has not had the plague, but Russell has. According to what we learnt in ep 5, he would have transmitted it to her even after he recovered. Unless she has the natural immunity possessed by Jenny, Greg and Tom amongst others. What are the odds though that he should be one of the very few people to have the plague and live ('we've had one survival') at the same time that she should be one of the (equally?) few to possess natural immunity?
Tbh I don't think all the writers are on the same page regarding the plague (or 'the Death' as it's first referred to in this ep). As with the 'vaccine' rumour previously mentioned. Yes, it's just a rumour, but it makes me suspect the writer thinks the plague is still an ongoing thing.

The third act jarringly changes gear into a 'real time' account of Paul and Greg rescuing Tom Price and Barney from their expedition to the quarry, last seen in ep 2. We're given a very broad hint that the quarry's defenders are a mechanical device, but then we still have to watch 5 or 10 minutes of Greg's outflanking manoeuvre before the reveal. Credit where it's due, though, I thought it would be Anne inside the hut rather than the man she callously abandoned (now given a motivation and a name, Vic).

Closing sequence has an entirely unnecessary repeat of the Give Way thing from the start of ep 4.

We really are moving away now from what first interested me about this programme. Eps 1-4 had a transformative effect on me, but the subsequent ones don't seem to be treating the situation seriously enough. Care isn't being taken with the locations either; indoors and outdoors they are much too tidy for a world 6 months post-apocalypse.

Astronomical glitch with Tom explaining that he and Barney couldn't have escaped their pindown during the night because there was a moon. But we're told earlier on that a fortnight has elapsed since ep 7, in which Greg and Jenny were holed up in the minibus on a night with a bright full moon. If that was a fortnight ago then last night was the dark of the moon, the best possible night on which to escape.
(Then again, perhaps Tom is lying about the moon, I accidentally read a terrible spoiler about an upcoming ep, which suggested that lying is very much his forte).

Further to the dating question: Abby said in ep 5 that September 8th [year 1] was 'before the plague', and I used that as backup for my theory based on the weather in ep 1 that the plague struck no later than October/November [year 1]. (I'm getting fed up saying [year 1] so I'm going to assume that year 1 is 1975 henceforth).

Now, I notice that the London arrival stamp in the opening credits has the date Sep 2, and the latest of the international stamps is Sep 4. That can help us date ep 1, which we know starts on a Monday afternoon. Mon Sep 15 1975? I think that's too close, Abby might have said Sep 8 was 'the week before the plague' if it had been Sep 15. So the earliest it can be is Sep 22, 1975, and on the other evidence the latest possible date is Mon Dec 1.

Vic says that Anne left '3 or 4 months ago', putting ep 2 in Nov or Dec. Today must be at least March 15th; we can refer to moon phase tables but, as noted above, there are conflicting claims about when the last full moon was. We definitely saw a full moon in ep 7, so going by that, this episode would finish on Wed Mar 31 1976. But retaining the doubt, today is Mar 15-31 so ep 2 was Nov 7-Jan 7, so the earliest date for ep 1 is Mon Oct 27 1975.

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.

Survivors - 6 Garland's War

With this and the previous episode we seem to be losing direction a bit, the overall story and world-building isn't really going anywhere. Or maybe it's just that I'm getting used to the coronavirus emergency and that has dulled the edge of my appreciation.

It's a good workmanlike story though, quite tense and with a double twist - given an extra layer of mis-misdirection by having Count Grendel as the Waterhouse leader. Sandifer thinks she's so clever with her psychochronography, but my techniques are even more advanced and can work retrospectively through time.

Everyone continues to wear winter coats, it could be very early March.

Abby really enjoying a smoke in this. 'I thought I'd given these up,' she says ruefully. I wonder if that remark and her nicotine hunger is meant to suggest that she hasn't been able to forage any more cigarettes since we last saw her smoking at breakfast in the railway station at the start of episode 5, or whether she means she'd given up before the plague. I'll have to check ep 1 to see if we see her smoking there.

Cigarette supplies notwithstanding, she hasn't run out of eyeliner, that's reassuring. Oh, now I want to write fanfic about her finding some between episodes 1 and 2 and being encouraged thereby (though poignantly reminded of the old world).

In case it isn't obvious, I've really connected with Abby as a character, her combination of vulnerability and indomitability is fascinating.

Survivors - 5 Gone to the Angels

I always resent the 'British Government', Torrance, Bill Gore types who turn up in these dystopias and spoil everything. I suppose people are divided between those who would see the collapse of civilisation as a chance to be free, and those who would see it as a chance to push others around.

Jenny says, with strange precision, that not many five-year-olds could have survived the plague. I was a 'rising five' when episode 1 went out on Wednesday April 16th 1975 - indeed my first day of school was Monday April 14th. It looks like I probably perished :( .

Further to the dating question in the previous episode - in the newspaper scene Abby says the plague had not yet begun on September 8th [year 1], which lends some weight to my argument in the previous article that episode 1 takes place no later than October, but doesn't rule out the November possibility either.

Everyone has winter coats on still in this, I'm guessing it's late Feb or early March.

The discovery that Abby, having had the plague, is still carrying it and can infect those not previously exposed, is a shocking one, rather like the poisonous (infected? polluted? radioactive?) fish in the previous episode. Jenny brings up the idea I mentioned in the last article, about pockets of continuing civilisation, which, she says - even if they existed - would be destroyed if they found them. And that the same would go for Peter if they ever found him.

But there's a glitch here, Jenny and Greg speak as if they had had the plague just the same as Abby. But they didn't - as I observed in my reaction to episode 3, they had natural immunity. Yes, the immune might still be carriers*, but my point here is about who has had the plague and who hasn't. I'm guessing this is a continuity issue between the first 3 episodes written by Terry, and the subsequent ones from other pens.

*Might they? I'm a software developer not an epidemiologist. I don't even know about real plagues never mind this particular fictional one.

Survivors - 4 Corn Dolly

Some quite moving moments in this episode, starting with Abby seeing the snowdrops and the songbirds and thinking of what, if anything, spring means in her new world.

Then there's her maternal instinct to take care of young Mick, contrasting with the conversation she and Jen have about giving birth post-apocalypse.

And then - Charles having exposited that so far none of the survivors knew each other before the plague, or even knew of each other - they gather round the kitchen table for dinner and companionship. That brought tears to my eyes actually. All the more so because there was obviously something not quite right about Charles and his settlement, and I knew that we were about to find out what it was.

My copy of Day of the Triffids is in my parents' loft, so I couldn't check, but ISTR one of the settlements in that also is run by a man whose main motive is to impregnate all his female followers. One of several similarities between the two stories so far. Though to be fair to Charles, the implication is that the loss of his three children to the plague has unbalanced him and made him focus his otherwise sound plans for rebuilding civilisation onto the 'I get to f**k everyone' issue.

Jenny and her friends have lost track of the date. I wouldn't have lost track of the date, because I've read Robinson Crusoe. I'm not sure they've read or watched any 'last man'/post-apocalyptic fiction/drama at all, because they're astonishingly careless, they never set a watch at night or have qualms about setting off alone across country in the casual expectation of meeting back up with the other two somehow. I suppose that might be what the bit about ignoring the Give Way signs at the junction was about.

Anyway, the point is, it's now February 24th. And in the opening scene Greg talks about 'weeks' having passed.

In episode 1 the weather was warm enough for Abby to be playing tennis, albeit in long trousers, and for there to be thunder while she was having the plague. So it must have been October at the very latest then. OTOH she and her daily woman both put winter coats on to go to the station. It might have been November.

Either way, if it's February now we must give her and her friends credit for surviving the first winter.

Survivors - 3 Gone Away

Very pleased to see that Survivors isn't just disaster porn - not that I don't like that, I watched ep 1 again yesterday before making my previous post - but that it has other issues on its mind.

This ep not only has what until a week ago I would have said was the tensest shopping trip I've ever experienced, but a whole political/philosophical debate sparked off by the word 'looter' and whether it still means anything and, if so, who to.

Well observed that Abby is to some extent swayed by the Wormley faction's arguments, and I was too, while Dave was still talking about rationing and preventing hoarding. And I've read a lot more apocalyptic SF than her, my default assumption is 'of course the concept of looting is meaningless in this situation'. So well done Terry. Even the continuation of the debate among the Abby faction in the car afterwards doesn't feel overly forced.

Interesting bit of possible class solidarity between John (the reluctant Wormleyite) and his fellow middle class members Abby and co when he tells them to conceal themselves while he puts Dave off the scent.

When Talfryn Thomas is fingering the washing on the line, we see some green and black striped socks which might be a mistake for the blue and black striped socks Jenny is seen to be wearing in episode 1, or might just be another pair from an assorted colours pack she bought in 70s M&S before all this began.

It occurs to me btw that there are only two characters in Survivors who we see in the pre-disaster world - Abby in the opening scene of ep 1 when she's playing against the tennis machine, and her daily woman when she enters same scene to call her to the phone. (Yes, I know the plague is already well in progress at that point, but we don't know that till the second scene in the kitchen).

Also Abby appears to be the only person involved who's actually had the plague and recovered. Jenny, Greg and Talfryn all appear to have had natural immunity.

NB btw the careful way that the possibility of other diseases like typhoid - 'not the plague' - has to be introduced. It would be interesting if they later put the plague back in the foreground, maybe with some very isolated people who've never been exposed to it, a bit like the bone fever/fat death escapees on Helliconia who find themselves regarded as freaks for their pains.

Timeline: Tom Price's visit to the farm takes place, he says later, 3-4 days before he meets the trio. When we first see them it might well be the same day as the end of ep 2: Jenny's expressing gratitude for 'the first hot meal she can remember'.

Abby says she's been driving around aimlessly, perhaps referring to the gap between eps 1 and 2 (Monday-Thursday week 2).

The shopping expedition might be the same day or more probably the next day at the earliest (Monday week 3). Jenny's socks have joined Abby's clothes on the washing line when Tom Price arrives, suggesting it's at least Monday. That would mean Price was on the farm about Friday week 2, which sort of fits with Abby finding the abandoned Rolls on Saturday. But it doesn't give him much time to go to London and back, because it was Friday that he met Jenny at the clothes shop. Perhaps 2 or 3 days have passed between the opening scene and the foraging trip. It's about the middle of week 3, and this is really the last point at which we can date back day by day to the plague outbreak.

Survivors - 2 Genesis

(Moved to http://shallowlikeus.blogspot.com/2020/03/survivors-genesis.html)

Survivors - 2 Genesis

Watched episode 2. There seemed to be some confusion about how much time had passed since ep 1 - looking at Abby and Jenny, it doesn't seem much time at all, perhaps only the 'week' that Jenny tells Talfryn Thomas it's been since she spoke to anyone. But Arthur Wormley talks about martial law being declared in 'the first panic weeks', it might be a month or more.

Talfryn Thomas driving through the post-apocalyptic landscape in a white Rolls-Royce, easy listening tape on the car stereo.

I liked it when Abby gives Arthur Wormley Dr Warlock's exposition, improved and expanded, it was the first time I felt she was getting on top of things, and the first thing I've seen this week that's cheered me up. I also enjoyed the repetition of the 'will Jenny meet up with Abby? not yet' tease from ep 1, which Terry, showman that he is, knows that he has to resolve in Chekhov/Hitchcock style 3rd time round in the climactic scene of ep 2.

Getting back to the dating question. Abby's conveniently weekday-displaying, conveniently battery-powered bedside clock showed that she started being really ill early on Tuesday morning, Monday being the first day of the action which I shall refer to as Monday week 1. Equally it showed her coming round on Saturday afternoon, and presumably it was the same day that she set off for the school. She doesn't take anything with her so perhaps we can assume she gets there the same day. She spends the night in the lab with Dr Warlock and presumably returns home the next day, Sunday. By the time she's had a shower, cut her hair, burned the house down and rolled the closing credits it's night-time, Sunday night.

That estimate also seems to work for Jenny's timeline which we see in parallel.

In ep 2, we see Abby waking up and reacting to the helicopter - something I didn't expect to see btw, I wondered for a moment if I'd got the eps out of order, or otherwise if this was a recycling of the Torrance subplot from Day of the Triffids - and then next stopped by the ford, where she approaches the river to wash her face as if she hasn't done that very often before. (Tyne Brand tinned steak on the fire btw, yum).

(I've just realised btw that we have already seen her asleep in a car, that first afternoon in the station car park in ep 1. Two very different ways to wake up.)

That same day Jenny misses Abby at the ford and meets Tom Price, who she tells she hasn't seen anyone for 'days'. Similarly, that same night (?) Abby says to Wormley she hasn't seen or spoken to anyone for the best part of a week. That suggests that at least 4 days have passed between eps 1 and 2, so the earliest it can be is Friday week 2.

That timeline more or less works for Greg's account of his journey from Rotterdam. He spends Friday night in the quarry with Anne, while Jenny is coughing in the clothes shop and Abby is dealing with Wormley. Anne says btw that 'it's going to be a long, dull winter', suggesting that it's November or early December now.

The next day, Saturday, he leaves the quarry and meets Jenny. She speaks of her loneliness during 'the last week', presumably she isn't counting her second encounter with Tom Price. Meanwhile Abby comes across Tom Price's Rolls abandoned at the roadside, and then spots what we presume to be the church.

That evening Greg, Jenny and Anne run out of petrol and that night Jenny sees Abby's fire. When the trio all meet at the church it's morning - perhaps the next morning? Abby's clothes are already drying on a line outside the church. If it is the next morning then it's Sunday week 2.

Survivors - 1 The Fourth Horseman

Recent events prompted me to start watching Survivors, which I thoroughly recommend if you're already feeling unsettled and want something worse to focus on. Relentless, horrifying and often moving, it's been a real experience so far.

I'm reposting my unstructured reactions here.

I'm watching ep 1 of Survivors and it's making the hair stand up on the back of my neck. 'They say a lot of the exchanges are short-staffed...'

That tennis machine is a splendid metaphor. Say what you like about Terry Nation, he may have been a hack, but he was an expert hack, he knew what he was doing.

'We've had one survival...'

The gradual breakdown of civilisation is really nicely paced. Like how Abby falls asleep in the car at the station with the radio on at 4pm, and wakes up at nine, and the radio is now just giving out static. And that's left subtly in the background, neither she nor David remarks on it.

Notice the recycling of tropes from Day of the Triffids - leaving money in abandoned shops to cover what you've taken, and the idea that the Americans will soon be along to sort everything out.
That church full of corpses though. Even Wyndham didn't go there.

The scene where Jenny empties out the dead man's bag, only to find it full of five-pound notes, which she abandons, is so wonderfully understated.