So the folks at the BBC, via the crew out at Warner Brothers, sent me a copy of the box set of Survivors Complete Seasons One and Two.  Interestingly, this is actually a remake, if I understand it correctly (my knowledge of British television history is a bit shaky) of the original series of the same name, which in turn was the adaptation of a novel.

And what Survivors offers–and offered–is a look at a society that’s about to have a seriously tragic day.  Specifically, they’re about to get hit with a virus that makes Captain Trips look like a tickle in the throat.  In fact, this particular flu is so bad that it ends up using the immune system to attack the rest of the body.  What happens from there involves a series of survivors–now comprising maybe only ten percent of the globe–who are left to live their lives as best they can.  We’ve got a mother in search of her son, an escaped prisoner, and a whole bunch of other folks who are on one mission or another in their mostly dead world.

It’s like The Stand The Series, folks, and the end result is a surprisingly deep and refreshing drama that will give you an ominously plausible look at a world gone horrifyingly mad in its final excesses, and what happens when lawlessness rules the day in a mostly dead world.  Turns out, it’s not all that much.

There’s a terrific variety of things that happen here, as those few who remain find themselves trying to survive in their new world.  For those who figure, were they in a comparable situation, that they’d just go looting what they like from the shelves of stores afterward, what if someone else gets the same idea…first?  And thus decides to attach right of property to it, earned or unearned?  A baffler, make no mistake–and a baffler that the folks in Survivors will have to grapple with.

Though there is a problem, here–Survivors has an unnerving tendency to move a bit slow.  It’s a bit maddening sometimes in its pacing, but the storyline is so good that it doesn’t matter so much.

I like this show.  Plain and simple, I like it.  There’s a lot TO like, and you’ll get plenty of it out of this box set.  The Screenhead Ten Scale gives this sweet dose of drama an eight out of ten, because even though the pacing isn’t the greatest, the plot makes up for it.