Survivors is a British post-apocalyptic fiction drama television series created by Terry Nation and produced by Terence Dudley at the BBC, that broadcast from 1975 to 1977.
It concerns the plight of a group of people who have survived an apocalyptic plague pandemic, which was accidentally released by a Chinese scientist and quickly spread across the world via air travel.
The series' main actors included Carolyn Seymour (Abby), Lucy Fleming (Jenny), Ian McCulloch (Greg), and Denis Lill (Charles).
Survivors, featuring interviews with actors Lucy Fleming, Ian McCulloch, and Carolyn Seymour, director Pennant Roberts, and scriptwriter Martin Worth, was broadcast on 5 December 2006, as part of the channel's Science Fiction Britannia series.
Two cameras were used, but one of them had a recurrent fault, which shows as multiple reflections on the left hand side of pictures in many scenes, particularly visible in series 3.
[citation needed] The principal characters of Abby, Greg, Jenny and Tom Price were retained, but new elements were introduced, including a subplot about the origins of the virus and a stronger focus on action.
[6] In June 2014, Big Finish Productions released the first four-episode volume of an audio drama expansion of Survivors, with Seymour, McCulloch, and Fleming reprising their screen roles.
[9] As the world's population is almost annihilated by a mysterious pandemic, accidentally unleashed by an unnamed Chinese scientist, the crisis is first seen through the eyes of two characters—Jenny Richards, a young working woman in London who is naturally immune to the disease, and Abby Grant, a middle-class corporate wife living a comfortable existence in a suburban commuter village who caught the virus but barely recovered, while her husband died.
As Abby goes in search of her son Peter, who was away at boarding school when the pandemic occurred, Jenny wanders aimlessly through the countryside.
Other major characters introduced in the first few episodes are the resourceful engineer Greg Preston, the shifty Welshman Tom Price, and two children, John Millon and Lizzie Willoughby.
After several adventures on the road, they find a property called The Grange which they can use as a base and, joined by other survivors, they form a potted community of disparate individuals all united by a shared purpose; to relearn the old skills of farming and tool-making, and to try to live in this new world.
Soon, civilization begins to collapse as the deaths increase, mass absenteeism affects public services, and amenities and the electronic media go off air.
Andrew orders Jenny, who has displayed an immunity to the virus, to leave London as fast as possible as the countless dead bodies will spread more diseases which she is vulnerable to.
New major characters comprising the Whitecross band are Charles' partner Pet Simpson, travelling doctor Ruth Anderson and farmyard labourer Hubert Goss.
However, they meet a broad spectrum of other survivors along the way, and the series continues to explore alternative reactions to the Death and what it takes to survive.
"Revelation" and "Exodus" depict events happening in parallel with the early episodes of the first TV series, as the Death first takes hold and wipes out much of the UK's population.