When I read that "Survivors" was to be "remade ..." I experienced an initial surge of excitement and anticipation, as I'm a great fan of the original.
However, when I then read those dreaded words "... for a modern audience", that excitement immediately dissipated, to be replaced with a feeling of deflation and resignation that this remake would no doubt simply turn out to be yet another case of politically correct tokenism and an orgy of 'wobblycam'.
And sadly, my fears have largely been borne out: We have a token Muslim, a token lesbian, a token black guy as the "hero" and a token black woman as the government minister "authority figure". Oh yes - and almost everyone seems to be under about 35 as well.
So if you're a young(ish) black, gay, Muslim or female (or any combination of these) you're apparently a "desirable survivor".
But if you're fat, old or ugly, unfortunately there's no place for you in this brave new BBC world. Ditto if you're a male Caucasian - although there does seem to be a limited number of vacancies available for them as dodgy characters / heavies.
So maybe it isn't quite so "representative" as the Beeb would like the viewer to believe (but it does speak volumes about its target audience). At least "Lost" has its token fat bloke as well.
None of this though would be *quite* so bad if it wasn't for the standard of the acting, which for the most part is mediocre at best.
And the jerky camera-work just RUINS the action scenes, as does the "pan camera close up to speaker's head while also capturing glaring sunlight through windows" technique in some of the more talky scenes (when WILL directors finally abandon these horrible - and horribly overused - camera-work fads?). The incidental music detracts as well.
Yes, the new "Survivors" may all be very hip and 21st century - but it's not a patch on the original. The BBC could have done much better, and the whole thing is a great opportunity squandered.
