Survivors - 2.11 New Arrivals

Abrasive agronomist Mark Carter BSc Ag shakes up the settlement with his plans for factory-style farming. The flu subplot eliminates Arthur and provides the moral: there's more to leadership than knowing what to do, and if people's morale is low they're likelier to die of illness. I was sorry to see Arthur go, I'd got quite fond of him.

Jack also has the flu - having not seen the next ep yet, I'm not clear whether he survived - and starts rambling about the threat Emlyn Hughes poses to West Ham. Then we see his hallucination of West Ham playing - against who a search leads me to believe are Liverpool in their 1972-73 away kit. The things I do for cult TV. That's the biggest deviation from series 1 realism so far: not only is it the first time we've seen anyone's thoughts, but also those thoughts are in the form of pre-plague footage.

I think btw Emlyn Hughes is the only contemporary public figure to be namechecked so far. The Home Secretary was mentioned in ep 1.1, but not named. (It would have been Roy Jenkins). I wonder if Emlyn, and Roy Jenkins, survived the plague?

Dating: the spring wheat was sown 'early last month', after the last frost (some time in April if they're over towards the Welsh borders). That makes it May at least, and in fact haymaking is in progress, so it can't really be earlier than mid-June. At the outdoor meeting Greg has his anorak on, but a lot of the others aren't wearing coats.

Charles says the plague was '18 months ago'. Once again that fits with the Nov-Dec period we've kept coming up with so far.