By Val McDermid

Radio 4, March 17, 2017 and on iPlayer

Society breaks down as ZIPS extorts a terrible price from the human race…

Val McDermid did a Facebook Live interview with Radio 4 earlier today and I took the opportunity to ask whether there was any element of what the scientists had told her that she couldn’t use because it went too far; she replied to the effect that there wasn’t and that she hadn’t shied away from the horror. This concluding part makes that clear, even if the evidence wasn’t there already from the first two portions of this chilling tale.

Things go from bad to worse to catastrophic for everyone involved – there’s no one left untouched by the ZIPS, with analogies of the death toll in the First World War very telling. McDermid makes a very important point, via Zoe’s narration, that we’ve pretty much become soft as a society, because we’ve felt insulated from the ravages of disease, and those who have a natural immunity, or somehow survive the ZIPS, have to make a fairly major mental adjustment if they’re going to be able to more than simply function in the new reality. (This is best demonstrated by a scene late in the episode featuring scientist Aasmah – you’ll know it when you hear it.)

There are some truly heartrending scenes in this with Gina McKee’s performance, which has been strong throughout, dialling up another level as she deals with a situation that no one should have to. Nitin Kundra’s Sam could easily have become a cliché but McDermid steers the character away from too much self-pity and Kundra delivers some very difficult lines well. And of course there are the politicians – some things, it seems, never change. Maybe it’ll be the cockroaches and the politicians that survive a holocaust…

It’s not all doom and gloom; there are sparks of human decency still left in the survivors, and you want to cheer at certain developments. In the same interview earlier today, McDermid indicated that there may be future life for Resistance in other media; I for one can’t wait to see what else she does with the topic.

Verdict: A suitably chilling and often dark conclusion to this excellent Dangerous Vision. 10/10

Paul Simpson