I'm afraid I'm out of step with popular opinion on this one.
My recollections of the series are largely critical. It featured a capable rather than first-rate cast, who were condemned to struggle with those banes of British television: an inadequate budget and a melodramatic script. Both of which are far more debilitating than any virus.
The melodrama is there simply to make up for the shortcomings in the finance department. So, we are treated to needlessly verbose confrontations, and hysterical shouting-matches.
Given its budgetary constraints; there was about enough mileage in the idea to run for a 6-part serial. After that it might have perished with honours. Unfortunately, it was allowed to outlast its value and quickly descended into a soap opera. Perhaps I should say soap-less opera, considering how scruffy and squalid everyone and every thing seemed to be. There were tiresome digressions with people going away on obscure adventures, whilst lovelorn individuals would eventually go off in pursuit of them. These crusades and searches became the mainstays of the series in its later incarnations. Even its creator, Terry Nation, walked quietly away from its death-bed before the plug was finally pulled.
Nope; I have no fond memories of this turkey. But anybody with a penchant for disease-induced end-of-civilisation-as-we-know-it-situations that bore your socks off, could do no better than to get their hands on 'Virus - The Director's Cut'. That's actually made in Japan, and comes with a standard Nipponese 3-year warranty to 'do your 'ead in', as the Cockneys say. Sometimes it's marketed under the more apt title of 'Fukkatsu No Hi'. I couldn't have put it better myself.
My recollections of the series are largely critical. It featured a capable rather than first-rate cast, who were condemned to struggle with those banes of British television: an inadequate budget and a melodramatic script. Both of which are far more debilitating than any virus.
The melodrama is there simply to make up for the shortcomings in the finance department. So, we are treated to needlessly verbose confrontations, and hysterical shouting-matches.
Given its budgetary constraints; there was about enough mileage in the idea to run for a 6-part serial. After that it might have perished with honours. Unfortunately, it was allowed to outlast its value and quickly descended into a soap opera. Perhaps I should say soap-less opera, considering how scruffy and squalid everyone and every thing seemed to be. There were tiresome digressions with people going away on obscure adventures, whilst lovelorn individuals would eventually go off in pursuit of them. These crusades and searches became the mainstays of the series in its later incarnations. Even its creator, Terry Nation, walked quietly away from its death-bed before the plug was finally pulled.
Nope; I have no fond memories of this turkey. But anybody with a penchant for disease-induced end-of-civilisation-as-we-know-it-situations that bore your socks off, could do no better than to get their hands on 'Virus - The Director's Cut'. That's actually made in Japan, and comes with a standard Nipponese 3-year warranty to 'do your 'ead in', as the Cockneys say. Sometimes it's marketed under the more apt title of 'Fukkatsu No Hi'. I couldn't have put it better myself.