For nine seasons, Survivors has been one of Big Finish’s most individualistic, and successful, Crown Jewels. Picking up from the 70s Tv show it’s explored and expanded the post-Death world and taken some extraordinary narrative risks. That willingness to stretch the format to breaking point is the driving force behind this ninth boxed set, which concludes the overall arc plot but sets the world up for some very interesting stories to come.

Jane Slavin’s ‘The Farm’ drops us right into the middle of life during, and partially after, war time. Jenny is working at The Farm, a facility dedicated to helping the ‘war effort’ to retake the country. Run by Meg Pritchard (Richanda Carey) with more than a hint of the Thatcher to her, it’s a pleasantly rural prison with walls which are far closer than Jenny thinks. And when her friend Beryl (Issy Van Randwyck) disappears, Jenny begins to realise just how rotten the Farm is. Slavin doesn’t so much open the boxed set as kick the door in, throwing a new set up, two excellent new characters and some very dark implications at you in short order. Class, sex, discrimination and eugenics are all touched on as the nature of Pritchard’s plan becomes clear and Carey does stunning work as the always not-quite-seething matriarch.

‘Hearts and Mines’ by Christopher Hatherall picks up from this excellent debut and focuses on Ruth, Abby and Craig. Ruth’s medical skills do double duty here as she’s pressed into duty as a double agent of sorts and that ethical grey area gives the always excellent Helen Goldwyn lots to work with. The dramatic engine of the story, however, is Craig and Abby and their increasingly fractious relationship. George Watkins is excellent as Craig, equal parts focused and dynamic and frustrated and he sparks off Carolyn Seymour’s Abby brilliantly. Seymour, the anchor in many ways for the whole series, has never been better than she is in this boxed set. Abby’s relentless determination to help her son, even knowing what a monster he’s become, could so easily have been exasperating. But Seymour is so good and Hatheralll’s script so well balanced that it never happens. Abby is a parent in extremis, driven harder towards her son because of his crimes and you never fail to see her point even if you don’t agree with it. Action heavy where ‘The Farm’ is a slow burn, ‘Hearts and Mines’ is a perfectly timed gear change.

‘Fade Out’ by Roland Moore is a highlight not just of this set but arguably the whole series. The survivors of the previous story hole up in an abandoned cinema as Robert Malcolm, Peter Grant and the Protectorate’s forces close in. With nowhere to run and no help coming, the survivors must face down their world and discover what, if anything, they can salvage. Not all of them will make it out alive.

This works so well, for three reasons. Firstly it’s a brilliantly structured piece that all boils down to two people and one choice. Secondly there’s a real sense off terror to the whole thing that makes the Protectorate a genuine visceral threat. Finally, this is the first time we’ve seen media exist in this universe and the characters react to it with the same joy Jenny reacts to cake and a sofa in ‘The Farm’. The intoxicating joy of watching a movie, especially a rubbish one, is so beautifully communicated here precisely because off how dire the situation is. These people are looking death in the face, but for two hours, they’re allowed to forget that. It’s a lovely, kind moment that makes the ending all the more brutal and tragic and cements the humanity of these characters even as it shows us what they’re facing.

And then, all hell breaks loose.

‘Conflict’ by Andrew Smith has so much work to do and it succeeds in doing all of it. In the space of an hour we get a chilling sense of how big the Protectorate is, a confrontation that’s been brewing all season and resolution for everyone. Even better, that resolution has none of the polite narrative tidiness of fiction. Instead this plays like a real war; scrappy, uneven, unfair and won quickly because one side moves faster and is ultimately more ruthless than its larger opponent. As well as establishing Jenny as a terrifying military strategist, it also gives every character one last moment in the spotlight and, even better, puts the Peter Grant problem front and centre and solves it once and for all.

Peter is the questing beast of the show, Abby’s reason to live. Peter is also a murderous sociopath. Peter is also a terrified little boy. All of these things come to the fore in the final few scenes here and the show as a whole is to be absolutely applauded for refusing every single simple solution. More specifically, Seymour and Joel James Davison (who is startlingly good here as he has been throughout), along with Lucy Fleming as Jenny turn in series-highlight work. Justice and kindness, obligation and trust, vengeance and hope all collide in those final moments and they do so in a manner that’s vastly emotionally and narratively satisfying. Smith even tops this, with a final scene that hints at what could be coming and how it’s bigger than all these characters, but, for the first time, in a good way. The Survivors have made it to a larger world. Now they have to learn how to live.

Verdict: Survivors, taken as a whole and as individual series, is an extraordinary achievement. It’s a period piece that refuses nostalgia at every turn, a faithful continuation that expands on its core material at every turn. A post-apocalyptic show that’s ultimately about hope. Listening to these characters endure and succeed for nine seasons has been an absolute pleasure and this is the curtain call they richly deserve. A note perfect end to a unique series. 10/10

Alasdair Stuart

Click here to order Survivors Series 9 from Big Finish