Comments on: Survivors

By: jay bee

jay bee — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 16:55:44 +0000

I can remember the original Survvors pretty well but I’m drawing a complete blank on 1990 which is odd because we did’t watch commercial television in our house and lapped up pretty much everything the beeb put out in those days – as long as it was on before 10pm or so.

On the other hand I still have very vivid memories of a lot of Play For Today although I’m sure that if they were re-run now I’d find plenty of faults with them

By: belle le triste

belle le triste — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 12:02:46 +0000

hooray indeed! also comity!

By: Bob B

Bob B — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 23:46:11 +0000

Hot news update:

“A new television adaptation of classic sci-fi story The Day of The Triffids is being made by the BBC. The drama, about menacing plants taking over the world, will be shown in two feature-length episodes next year.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7753322.stm

Hooray!

By: Frank

Frank — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 17:40:59 +0000

I recall the TV dramatisation of “When The Kissing Had To Stop” and have since read the book. Seem to remember that the upper-class protoganist—-Felix—was a Jew, but was a thoroughly decent sort i..e pausing in his hall way to listen to blissfully to carol singers (can’t really despise a toff like that can we?). In the TV drama, he was played by Alan Wheatley——-a.k.a, in my childhood milieu , as the Sheriff of Nottingham (Boo!). I believe it was broadcast in two episodes. Episode one recounted the events surrounding the election of a “popular front” government. The centre-right leader have the party suddenly collapsed and died—leaving the field open to a hard left-winger. In that respect, there was an uncanny foreshadowing of political developments a couple years later i.e. the demise of Gaitskell and the rise to power of Harold Wilson. Episode two ended with Felix, heading for the hills of Wales, to carry on a guerilla war against the treacherous Russian. Elaine Pedley and me wrote to ITV asking if they would make follow-up a series about Felix’s exciting adventures.

By: harry b

harry b — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 17:08:45 +0000

Oh no, it was definitely 1990. Edward Woodward!

By: Nabakov

Nabakov — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 16:34:10 +0000

Speaking of Tory dystopias, what about Constantine Fitzgibbon’s ” When The Kissing Had To Stop” or Saki’s “When William Came.”?

By: ejh

ejh — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 15:35:13 +0000

Oh, quite possibly. (Or you might be mixing it up with An Englishman’s Castle, which ran at much the same time, or so my fallible memory tells me.)

By: harry b

harry b — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 15:10:22 +0000

That’s funny, I remember finding 1990 utterly compelling, and thrilling, so must have been completely oblivious to the politics (the wiki page implies that the fact that bad guys were trade union leaders might have been obscure to a 14 year old, for whom names like Scanlon, Jones, Feather, Scargill meant much the same as names like Keegan…well, I can;t remember others because they meant nothing to me… to his peers); Greatorex was a great TV writer, so the politics aside it’s possible that it was really good.

By: ejh

ejh — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 14:59:39 +0000

1985 was a particularly poor effort, though of the same kind: the paranoid right who couldn’t tell a strike from a conspiracy. Not sure why the trade union movement is somehow responsible for 1990 being comissioned: the reputation of the writer, the highly successful Wilfred Greatorex, may have been of greater importance than the series’ politics.

By: ajay

ajay — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 12:59:27 +0000

As Alison Lapper shows admirably, someone born with almost no limbs can subsequently bear a fully-developed quote-unquote ‘normal’ child.

Actually, of course, Alison Lapper’s child had more than the average number of limbs…

By: ajay

ajay — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 12:58:37 +0000

54: I concur – though I haven’t seen the original paper, there is no mention in the article of lower degrees of IGF2 methylation in the offspring of famine babies; and not surprising that if your parents “are at high risk of a wide variety of health problems, including diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular disease” then you are more likely to be born underweight – no genetic influence necessary. Lysenkoism implies inheritance of acquired characteristics. Not happening here.

By: belle le triste

belle le triste — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 12:08:49 +0000

dave will be the first up against the potting-shed wall when the vegetable kingdom comes

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 11:05:00 +0000

@50: I read it all the way through, and couldn’t find any mention of anything supporting the hypothesis that changes to somatic DNA of individuals in the womb would be conserved in the germ-line – which is what is necessary for ‘Lysenkoist’ modification to work. Many things can alter somatic DNA - the blueprint of the individual between conception and final adult development. Some are random mutations, like those causing forms of dwarfism and phocomelia; others are external factors – thalidomide, heavy metals, etc. As Alison Lapper shows admirably, someone born with almost no limbs can subsequently bear a fully-developed quote-unquote ‘normal’ child.

Unless and until you can ‘get at’ the germ-line DNA buried in the sperm and ova, Lysenkoism is still a dead letter.

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 10:57:11 +0000

Having only read the synopsis of 1990, and being too young to remember its broadcast, I can’t help being struck by the thought that it shows how thoroughly the TU movement in the late 1970s had managed to discredit itself, that a ‘mainstream’ drama could be made – by the ‘notoriously pinko’ Auntie Beeb – demonising them in this fashion. BTW, it sounds like a rip-off of Anthony Burgess’s 1985 [pub. 1978], but the production chronology is out: an example of great [tiny?] minds thinking alike?

By: ejh

ejh — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 09:33:11 +0000

1990 was certainly from the political loony-right, with Britain having turned into a police state run by the trades unions.

There was one episode (series two episode six, I looked it up some time ago) which I seem to recall featured a world chess championship match in which the English player – England turning into Russia, geddit – broke off from the game in order to address the TV camera and tell the world it was “like a prison here”.