Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #29024 in DVD
• Released on: 2007-03-26
• Rating: Parental Guidance
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 4
• Running time: 676 minutes

Synopsis
The final series following the aftermath when a deadly virus escaped into the atmosphere. A number of survivors, seemingly immune to the disease, search each other out and try to rebuild humanity. Includes all 13 episodes.

Customer Reviews

A fitting conclusion to a great drama series
Like Series Two, this season is of an uneven quality, but as a whole it deserves five stars. In less talented hands,'Survivors' could have ended up as a serious version of 'The Good Life', with Greg, Jenny, Charles and the kids getting to grips with animal husbandry and spinning wool. Instead we are given of vision of post-Death Britain that is much less cosy, but far more convincing.

It is three years on from the plague that killed all but around 50,000 people. Packs of wild dogs roam the countryside and there are new diseases to contend with. Shot mainly in winter, Britain seems a grim and desolate place, but the outlook isn't entirely pessimistic. Some successful communities have been formed and have learned to become virtually self-sufficient. Also, some older technologies like wind and steam power have been revived. It is clear that a lot of thought went into what direction this series would take. The cast were, quite rightly, made to look more ragged and emaciated and the the complaint by some that only middle-class people survived has clearly been addressed.

In today's political climate, with global warming, terrorism, bird flu and the end of oil threatening our expectations of continued progress, this superb drama series seems more poignant than ever.

The DVD is very well produced, with an informative booklet about the background the the series. I strongly recommend this to anyone who likes thoughtful, well-written drama.

Terrific! Highly recommended
I only saw series one and five episodes of series two back in the seventies, so it's an unusual experience to find out what happened to the characters after so long. A testament to the power of the series that I was so moved, the characters seeming real enough to shed tears over.

Series two was a dud apart from one episode, although there were individual good scenes. The applied wisdom should be that once a series is in decline, it cannot recover. How surprising then that this third series is stunning. Interesting, compelling and moving, its photography and vistas especially remind me of Tarkovsky. Unlike series two, I will be watching all these again except the Bron one (that scarf doesn't do it for me!)

The departure of Carolyn Seymour at the end of series one baffles me to this day and Survivors always suffered for it, like carrying on the James Bond series with Felix Leiter. To build up a strong female character with a truly wonderful performance from the actress and pass on it in favour of the chauvinist Charles character from a particularly creepy episode in series one called 'Corn Dolly' seems perverse. Likewise, Greg only saw himself as 'enforcement', not a leader in series one, he becomes something else again here (although admittedly for practical reasons as he only wanted to appear in two episodes.) One feels an opportunity was lost with the Abby Grant character in favour of more traditional masculine leads. It also leaves a plothole as to why after traipsing the breadth of the country, the survivors do not come across her.

Nevertheless, this series stands up as the best without her and I did not find the absent Greg arc at all annoying. The producers seamlessly used it to enhance rather than hinder the narrative, introducing some interesting sexual politics and I especially liked some of the arguments and shouting matches the characters would get into for not always rational reasons, I thought that was very true to life. I disagree that the series should have ended with 'Long Live The King'. The final episode built up a full head of steam (if perhaps too abrupt a finish.) It was a rousing, fitting ending.

Lucy Fleming comes into her own after a somewhat colourless and flatly delivered performance previously. Hubert, while not always dependable, proves his staunch loyalty and usefulness and I even warmed to Charles. There are always interesting ironies and parallels, such as Frank's guilt mirrowed by Greg's in McCulloch's self-penned 'The Last Laugh'. He is a strong writer too. Somehow you don't expect that from an actor which is uncalled for, obviously.

No Seymour, but it would be churlish to give this outstanding third series anything other than five stars.

A Good Series, but a Disappointing Sequel
I went to this series with some trepidation, and came away with very mixed feelings.

The positive first. The episodes are mostly enjoyable and interesting, if "A Little Learning" was rather improbable (how have all those young survivors, most of whom probably can't drive, get together in an England of only 8,000?). "Mad Dog" grippingly portrays the terror of rabies in a world without hospitals. The characters were well drawn and held my interest. Hubert, in particular, has been developed wonderfully, while Brian Blessed makes a great villain in "Law of the Jungle". Charles gives a fine performance as the "believer", fixated on his goal at whatever cost to himself or anyone else, rather like Captain Ahab pursuing the white whale, and I could not pass by without mentioning Ian Cuthbertson's magnificent performance as the Laird. It had me in stitches (even if sometimes of a "laughing that I may not weep" variety) hearing him take a "Scottish nationalist" line in the most lah di dah English accent that you ever heard in all your puff. However, such inconsistencies are characteristic of nationalism, which isn't exactly famous for logic. This most amusing part of the series is among the most plausible, despite its somewhat depressing implications.

In short, were this a "stand alone" series, I could probably swallow minor irritations and give it four stars like its predecessor. But it isn't. It is a sequel to two previous - excellent - series. And in my opinion a poor fit with them. Maybe I'm finicky, but inconsistencies kept jarring on me.

In the earlier series we had no confirmed cases where two of the same family survived - entirely realistic given a survival rate of only 0.2%. This is now completely overturned. In no less than three episodes, "A Little Learning", "Law of the Jungle " and "The Reunion", we have two or more blood relations together, and in one case four. Talk about overkill! I half expected to see Abby coming up the drive with Peter. It was the only thing they left out.

The same thought crosses my mind in regard to some later episodes. If we're going to let families surviving like this, why not have one of the Royal Family (it's big enough) to become our lawful King? No more unlikely than the above.

Even worse, the difficulties of rebuilding with so tiny a population, so well depicted in the earlier series, are now handwaved away by conveniently discovering lots of extra survivors up north, apparently because in the Highlands more people escaped infection. Iirc, the first series made clear that survivors were "carriers" who would spread plague to any uninfected people they encountered. Are they no longer carriers? Maybe, but we aren't told so, or why. It is just passed over. Likewise the failure to detect the Scottish community before. In Series 2, Whitecross heard no transmissions except from Cairo. Could no one in this much closer community operate a radio transmitter? Or other groups, since if thinly populated mountain regions survive, there should be others in the Alps, Pyrenees etc far nearer than Egypt.

"Law of the Jungle" had an interesting sub-plot, but which wasn't carried through. Given the difficulties of surviving as farmers (especially with no previous experience) hunting might well seem a more attractive option. I was disappointed at this angle not being pursued, and felt that the script "cheated" somewhat by making the hunters an unnecessarily nasty bunch. Why should they be worse than other survivors? Would they have seemed so wrong-headed with a leader as personable as, say, Garland?

Also, I felt that at times some figures act out of character. Thus Charles seems ready to accept a regime reproducing features of the old world which he had been glad to escape, for no better reason than some problems with marauders. Yet marauders seem no worse a problem than in earlier series, and even in this one were handled in "The Peacemaker" without anything so drastic. Oh, and did that corny flag make you cringe as it did me? Sheer satire, but nobody laughed. Without endorsing Sam's argument that "We're better off as we are" by the end of "Long Live The King" I was probably nearer his position than any other time

Nor could I quite swallow all those railways, power stations and telephone lines still working after three years of neglect. It made me smile, recalling what quite minor problems on the line can do to BR services.

I've rather concentrated on the negatives, which makes me sad, as one who loved "Survivors" , especially as, in itself, Series 3 isn't really too bad. But that's the problem. It had a lot to live up to, and couldn't quite meet that demanding standard. On the whole, I'm glad the projected fourth series wasn't made, the path would like;y have been downhill. Better, perhaps, that "Survivors" wound up where it did, leaving me with lots of good memories (even from this series) and relatively few bad ones.