Spoilers

There’s a food crisis, everyone’s going hungry and the New Federal Government don’t care. Prime Minister Celia Tate thinks she’s got nothing to worry about. But as the baking hot summer of 1996 begins to bite, the NFG finds itself facing down a sudden, brutal revolution – and Abby and Jenny find themselves on the front lines.

Ken Bentley returns to Survivors and pulls double duty here as both writer and director. This is the Survivors endgame, and the set’s tone and ambition reflects that as we return to the NFG and to Belinda Lang’s magnificently awful Celia Tate. Tate is a modern politician, all spin and image and ruthless determination to hold onto her position. Lang is always fantastic and here she’s on top form, her Tate tipping over into the exact sort of disciplinarian arrogance that will only make the situation much worse. There’s an ideological clash at the core here and as Tate and Jenny clash yet again, it becomes clear that there are parts of the old world that shouldn’t be brought back.

Daisy Badger is the opposite side of the coin as Deborah Adams. The leader of the insurrection, she’s tragic at first and then becomes as monstrous as Tate. Badger is superb here and she and Tate bounce off each other fantastically as two women whose ruthlessness only brings out the worst in the other. This gives the story a fiercely bleak tone that Survivors always excels at and when the blood begins to flow it doesn’t stop for a long time. Crucially, Bentley’s script manages to do this in a manner that doesn’t sideline Jenny and Abby. They’re both still the heroines of the piece but events move too fast and are too large even for them.

We check in on a surprisingly large cast, many of them pulling double duty in service to that scale and they all impress. Enzo Squillino Jr is especially good as hard-bitten ranger Phil Harris as is Sam Stafford as Robin Page. Robin is one of Bentley’s biggest narrative swings: bringing the character back from an earlier set, given him everything he wants and watching as that destroys him. Originated by Barney Fishwick, Robin’s one of the series’ most interesting characters and this set uses him in some deeply clever ways. By the ending of this story, no one is safe, nothing is the same and while the change that comes may be for the better, it’s a change covered in the blood of more than one character. It’s also a change built into a relatively minor beat from an earlier set that unfolds here in a deeply impressive way. This is a world where everything has consequences and Tate finds that out to her cost.

‘The Turning’ is a huge story with a huge cost and the set’s masterstroke is in matching it with ‘Samaritans’. The former is a full on, and strikingly bleak, action movie. The latter sees Abby and Jenny staggering from the flames of their previous life into a very different, and much smaller world. Foraging in the woods, Abby and Jenny stumble across an old man being attacked by an odd group of people. They rescue him, fight the attackers off and then care for him as he slowly begins to die. On paper that’s pretty much it, but the story goes into so much more detail than that suggests and in doing so throws every single character into an entirely new light.

Seymour and Fleming are always fantastic but they’re especially good here. This is Abby and Jenny minus every one of the resources and experiences they’ve had up to now and neither are on good form. Crucially, even though they’re in serious trouble, their friendship has never been closer to the fore. There’s a steely core to both women and their friendship is forged in adversity and rather more comfortable there than either of them would care to admit. Until they meet John (David Shaw-Parker), the old man whose final days are made comfortable by their presence. All three performers have a colossally impressive natural presence and the script embraces that.

Much of it is John telling the stories of his life to the two women, and seeing the damage in their own. He has one line in particular about how the world teaches you to suffer that hits like a hammer blow three years into the pandemic. The script also slowly refutes that, as John gives them the distance and grace to realize they are more than their past choice and much more than the blood on their hands. It’s honest and pragmatic, kind and tragic and plays for all the world like folk horror. Three survivors and a fantastic dog, huddled around a fire and trying to get to the next morning to try again. It’s, initially, as bleak as ‘The Turning’ but Bentley’s last move is his best. As the episode finishes, Abby and Jenny find themselves with the resources they need to survive, a blank page of sorts and a really good dog. They, and we, are also on the verge of the dark woods where Boo (Hannah Raymond-Cox) and her people live. A new way to survive in a world that seems to want no one to make it. Another chance for the two leads.

Verdict: Another great set in a series that remains one of Big Finish’s best. 9/10

Alasdair Stuart

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