Friday 28 November 2008

Looking like a true survivor

Feeling like a little kid: Galashiela's 'phoned this evening, four times without leaving a message, at 10.16, 10.17, 10.18 and 10.23; it feels exciting but a little scary having her trapped in my 'phone, like when I was 5 and caught a bee in a jar. It hummed furiously until I was sure I could feel the glass vibrating with its anger and I started to worry that, when I let it out again, it'd exact a painful revenge upon me. Galashiela in my 'phone feels like that...

So far, I'm loving Survivors, to the extent that I'm considering getting hold of a boxed set of the original series (it was a little before my time) for comparison. It's exactly the kind of slightly down-at-heel British apocalypse I like, what Brian Aldiss (in a spot of SF authorial bitchslapping of John Wyndham) termed "cosy catastrophe".

I like the cosiness - and occasionally clunky dialogue, the hint of twee (even Dexter, this week's gun-toting New Warlord is basically a minor Mad Max baddy in zip-up Fred Perry), the hovering spectres of Tom and Barbara Good. I quite like the fact that the lesbian doctor isn't out about being a lesbian or a doctor. I'm even tolerating the Lost-like tendency of this particular bunch of survivors to maintain immaculate make-up and/or clean-shavenness weeks after the catastrophe itself.

The only thing that's annoying me is the repeated montage of Alim and Najif unconvincingly "bonding" over football and chickens. Let's hope the sentimentalised Irresponsible Playboy Redeemed By Lovable Orphan (which, let's face it, began and ended with Annie) doesn't become a weekly fixture...

3 comments:

Spectacled Bear said...

Despite the mountain of important stuff I must be getting on with, I am spending my time today daydreaming about how happy Paterson Joseph and I would be in our little log cabin in the woods somewhere, after the Endtimes.

I think it is exactly that cosy catastrophe aspect that I am enjoying too because that's the imaginary landscape of my childhood when I wanted Armageddon to come and transform my dull village into John Wyndham World.

I gather there's also a remake of The Day of the Triffids on the go.

Spectacled Bear said...

Yes, here's that Triffids news story.

Robin said...

Nooo! No Triffid remakes! Please?!

I love John Wyndham's stuff, even the cosiness. Though I've yet to read The Outward Urge - not sure why it never gripped me.

I am always dubious about adaptations of sci-fi books. There always seem to be unnecessary changes made, or things about characters that are just unfeasible.