Binge Watching Dystopian Telly on Lockdown

During "lockdown 1", television became the drug of every nation state on planet earth.

TV viewing surged during lockdown and it's much the same for its sequels. But here's the beef: on DTV or VOD platforms there's so much dystopian crap that you struggle to find some light relief from the plague going down outdoors. Do I really wanna watch The Stand, Songbird or Utopia in the present climate? The Walking Dead or any of its lame spin offs? M-O-O-N that spells NO. Yep. Sod that for a lark. Lemme binge on summink bonkers from yesterday instead.

Survivors  Forget the half-arsed 21st Century reboot, this hypnotic BBC drama from the 1970s predicted the 2020 pandemic. In doubt? Check out the creepy title sequence. Plot: a disease kills 90% of the global population, BUT, for some inexplicable reason, the only people left in the U.K. are bickering boujis and rustic plebs. So much for meritocracy. 

Another gem from the decade of mass unemployment and hyper-inflation is the Guardians. Now on DVD, and probably in the home library of Nigel Farage, this TV series imagined England under the thumb of a sinister regime that brooked no argument. Never shown in Northern Ireland, and little remembered today, it's period details and characters (sexually predatory men) will provoke howls of shock. 

Fear of the jackboot, right and left, was constant during the 1970s. Take the premise of 1990. Edward Woodward plays a crusading hack up against a militant left-wing government run by an Orwellian civil service. "1984+6" was how the writer of the show, Wilfred Greatorex, neatly summed up its premise. Unavailable on DVD for some years, it's now bootlegged on YouTube for posterity. Just don't snitch to Aunty Beeb.   

The Knights of God: Set in 2020...

Kids weren't spared the dystopian ordeal during the 1970s and 1980s, either. The Changes. Noah's Castle. The Knights of God. Economic meltdown. Mass unemployment. Civil strife. Nutters left, right and centre taking over the government. The plots seemed barmy and far-fetched at the time. But now? It begs the question: does modern life imitate art or bad TV shows that nobody remembers but me?

TV covered. Time to binge on some end-of-the-world films of note. No Blade of Grass (a deadly virus wipes out the global food supply). The Omega Man (Charlton Heston versus a plague afflicted zombie cult). Soylent Green (this time Charlton Heston uncovers a sinister conspiracy to feed a starving world in a future blighted by Malthusian overpopulation and pollution). Damnation Alley (a ragtag band of survivors roadtrip America after a nuclear war in the coolest off-road vehicle of all-time). 

Mad Max. The Day After. Threads. Z for Zachariah. I give up. Time to switch to the Disney channel for The Mandalorian. Isn't Baby Yoda cute? Yes. Nice to have some light relief when the plague makes scared binge watchers of us all.  Square eyed after watching dystopian olde TV shows and movies, I emerge into the winter light for an "essential journey" to shop and exercise, no less fearful about the future and the shape of things to come.