Survivors cast survive swine flu

By Tim Masters
Entertainment correspondent, BBC News

I can build a fire - just - I don't know if I could do it without a box of matches and I can dig a hole and have a poo Julie Graham

The post-apocalyptic drama Survivors returns this week, with the cast and crew counting themselves fortunate that 2009's swine flu outbreak didn't wreck the making of the second series.

"Amazingly, we were filming in the Midlands where all the swine flu was happening," says actress Julie Graham, who plays the heroine Abby Grant.

"I was convinced that somebody was going to get it, because we all work in such close proximity, and we were all going to go down with it and it would a make a fabulous story. And nobody got it!"

Set in the present day, Survivors focuses on a group of people thrown together in the aftermath of a virus which wipes out most of the world's population.

Written by Adrian Hodges, it is a re-imagining of the 1970s BBC drama series based on the novel by Terry Nation.

The end of the first series in 2008 saw Abby kidnapped by an armed squad from the mysterious "laboratory". Meanwhile, Greg Preston, played by Paterson Joseph, was fighting for his life after being shot.

The new series picks up from where the 2008 story left off

Also in the cast is Max Beesley, Zoe Tapper, Phillip Rhys and Robyn Addison.

Julie Graham says she was doubtful the second series would have been made had the swine flu epidemic taken hold - but she did reveal her three-year-old daughter caught the virus while she was away filming.

"She was very, very poorly," says the Scottish actress, "but she's very robust and she got over it."

She says she could only speak to her daughter by phone.

"It was really horrible - but I think the rest of the cast were quite relieved that I wasn't going home that weekend."

Adrian Hodges, the writer and executive producer of Survivors, says the flu outbreak didn't come as a complete surprise.

"When we first started talking to the virologist a couple of years ago he always said this pandemic is going to happen one day - it's going to be pretty soon - and he always seemed rather excited by the idea... the irony is that it happened so much sooner than anyone expected.

"It really was quite sobering for me to turn on the news and see all those scenes from Mexico which - please don't think I'm trivialising this - did look exactly like scenarios we'd created for the first episode of the first series."

He points out that the fantasy genre is no stranger to killer virus plotlines.

"I suppose what swine flu has done is just remind us that we are dealing with a realistic premise, but we are also dealing with an adventure which is about people's reactions to extreme situations," he says.

Several cast members of Survivors say they read Cormac McCarthy's bleak post-apocalyptic novel The Road while they were on set.

The film version, starring Viggo Mortensen, was released in the UK last week.

"We're a lot more cheerful than The Road, I can promise you that," laughs Hodges.

Doom and gloom

"The Lab" plays a much bigger part in the new storyline

Julie Graham does however hint that the new series will be "very dark" in places.

"You have to go down that road to a certain extent because that's the reality of it. Food's running out and people are becoming more desperate and the city's a very dangerous place.

"They are having to face fires and floods and vigilantes and all sorts of terrible things. But there are light moments as well and as the series progresses the hope is reignited and there are moments of tranquillity. So it's not all doom and gloom."

Graham adds that the second series does explore more about the Survivors becoming self-sufficient, but not in the same way as the 70s show.

"I seem to remember in the original series people started growing beans and knitting sweaters and stuff," she laughs.

And she wishes she was more like that in real life.

"I grow tomatoes in a shed. We grow herbs and stuff. I would like to be more like that," she says.

"I would like to do one of those survival courses - I suggested the cast did it before we started the second series. Certainly if we do a third we should all go on a Ray Mears survival course."

The actress admits she's not averse to roughing it on holiday.

"I camp! We do wild camping with the kids - we never go to campsites. You've got to forget all your home comforts and get stuck in.

"I can build a fire - just. I don't know if I could do it without a box of matches. And I can dig a hole and have a poo.

"That's something that's never addressed in Survivors, I have to say. You don't ever see anybody sneaking off. We don't go there!"

Survivors is on BBC One on Tuesday 12 January at 2100 GMT.