The nightmare vision of a post-apocalyptic Manchester created for cancelled TV show

A nightmare world of a post-plague Manchester was depicted in a now largely forgotten TV show cancelled over 10-years.

Based on a 1975 TV series of the same name, Survivors first appeared on BBC One in 2008. Pre-empting the Covid pandemic by a good decade, the TV drama depicted the lives of a group of people who survived an unknown strain of flu which had wiped out most of the human race.

Set in the Noughties, the series starring Julie Graham, Freema Agyeman and Max Beesley focused on a group of survivors of a devastating viral pandemic, referred to as "European flu". Like many post-apocalyptic shows, it focused on the characters' struggle to survive a crumbling society, much like The Walking Dead which came out soon after the show ended.

As civilisation crashes, broadcast media goes off the air and the National Grid shuts down, leaving the country in darkness. With 99 per cent of the population dead, a fire burns out of control in Spinningfields while the lawless streets are places of debris and disease.

The story begins in Manchester city centre as the pandemic swept the world. A combination of early Sunday morning filming and CGI transformed Manchester into a desolate and empty wasteland for the show.

The surviving group were forced back to the abandoned city, risking attack from the few desperate urban survivors who stayed behind. Actor Philip Rhys, who played survivor Al, said: "It was quite eerie, actually, Manchester being closed off for filming with entire streets empty. You get that sense of desolation."

During the real-life pandemic in 2020, a story was published in The Guardian describing the show as both prescient and "ahead of its time." The show's creator, Adrian Hodges, said: "I couldn’t watch that