• Survivors

• Genesis of a Hero

Created by prolific TV writer Terry Nation — best known for creating Blake's 7 and the Daleks in Doctor Who — Survivors is one of only a handful of sci-fi TV productions which have dealt with the possibility of a global pandemic that could wipe out the majority of the Earth's population.

In the case of Survivors, the destructive agent is a virus that escapes from a Chinese laboratory — something that is unforgettable to anyone who has seen the eerie title sequence.

The series opens in the UK as the epidemic gets under way. Hospitals are full, the authorities are unable to cope, and civilisation as we know it is rapidly coming to an end.

The three central characters were secretary Jenny Richards (Lucy Fleming), engineer Greg Preston (Ian McCulloch) and housewife Abby Grant (Carolyn Seymour), who all meet up by the conclusion of Genesis, the second episode.

Season 1 was concerned mainly with Abby's quest to find her son, Peter, who was known to be uninfected before he left his boarding school, and the search for other survivors.

By the time of Season 2, Abby was written out, supposedly to go in search of Peter , and the basic community which had been established by the end of the previous season was destroyed in a fire. The survivors, including Greg and Jenny, join up with another community run by Charles Vaughan and the series proceded on its merry way.

Season 3 saw a change of direction, as Greg had left Whitecross at the end of the previous season in a hot air ballon and, after receiving news of his exploits, Charles and Jenny set out on horseback to find him. Two of the episodes did indeed feature Greg — both of which were written by Ian McCulloch — but by the end of the season he was dead from smallpox and had posthumously been named King Greg.

To tie in with the first season, Terry Nation novelised four of his seven scripts, although the ending was to differ significantly from the series as Greg, Jenny and Abby decide to leave for a new life with a community in France. One further novel based on the series was subsequently released. Genesis of a Hero, penned by John Eyers, continued from the conclusion of Nation's novelisation and followed Peter Grant. The story eventually saw the overthrow of President Wormley — the ex-union leader played so memorably in the television series by George Baker.

Although Survivors only ran for three seasons, Survivors has remained a firm favourite with fans of sci-fi TV fans, with one edition of BBC Four's 2006 series The Cult of... taking a look back at the series.

Despite talk in the mid-1990s of a continuation of the series, to be produced by BBC Scotland, nothing was to eventually come of it. However, in December 2007 it was announced that the BBC had acquired the rights to adapt Terry Nation's Survivors novelisation. The six-part series, starring Julie Graham as Abby, Paterson Joseph as Greg, Freema Agyeman as Jenny and Max Beesley as Tom Price, was shown on BBC One and BBC HD in November and December 2008.

Despite being based on the novelisation rather than the original television series, the six episodes strayed significantly from the original text, with the character of Jenny being killed off early on — another victim of the plague — and Zoë Tapper's Anya being called in as a suitable replacement. The series also saw the introduction of a conspiracy angle in which an unidentified (and completely isolated group of scientists) were trying to find a cure. The ending to the season was also significantly different, involving a cliffhanger in which Greg was shot and Abby abducted by the mystery scientists.

The "re-imagining" proved popular enough for a second season of six episodes to be swiftly commissioned for broadcast in 2009.

All three seasons of the original series were re-relased on DVD late in 2008 by 2 Entertain, with the box set also including the Cult of...Survivors documentary. Season 1 of the remake was released in January 2009, shortly after transmission.