Survivors: the classic TV saga returns

We're in the kitchen of a remote Lancashire farmhouse discussing the end of the world. What would we do if we were among only a handful of survivors left after a plague had eradicated the rest of humanity?

Hugh Warren, producer of BBC1's new drama series Survivors, reckons a cyanide capsule might be the least messy option.

"It's like back in the Cold War," he says. "If there was going to be a nuclear attack, you always wanted to be right under the warhead. Apart from anything, the alternative would be so lonely. Human beings are such social creatures."

Not for Warren the lot of the protagonists in his apocalyptic six-parter – a remake of the 1975 Terry Nation saga that gripped the country in the midst of an earlier banking crisis, oil shock and doomed Labour government. They must band together and make the best of things, and Warren has been living with their doomsday scenario for several months by the time I visit the set in drizzle-swept moors between Bolton and Burnley.

"The series is about survival in practical and social terms," he says. "There's no electricity, no running water – or all the infrastructure things. There are no mobile phones or computers. But also it's [about survival] in a social way – the breakdown of law and order – does it become the survival of the fittest, or does it become more collaborative, people supporting each other?"

A bit like Big Brother, perhaps? "There is a Big Brother element to it," says Warren. "It's a bunch of people who have no history with each other who are thrown together in a completely strange environment. And it's also a bit like Lost, which is the series we're probably closest to. Although I don't say that to too many people, because that's setting yourself a rather high benchmark."

Actually for quite a few older viewers the benchmark is not going to be Lost, but the original series of Survivors. The terribly, terribly cut-glass accents in Terry Nation's drama may remind you that 1975 was slightly closer in years to Brief Encounter than to 2008, but here was spare, compelling storytelling of the first order. I watched the opening episode again recently and was immediately hooked. And any drama that kills off Peter Bowles halfway through its opening episode must have something going for it.

The youthful cast of the modern-day Survivors includes Max Beesley, Julie Graham, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Freema Agyeman from Torchwood, Paterson Joseph (currently being touted as David Tennant's replacement on Doctor Who and the first black Time Lord) and Phillip Rhys from 24. The central character, if there is one, is played by Julie Graham from Bonekickers, as a working mother whose search for her young son – away on an Outward Bound course at the time the plague virus strikes – forms a strong emotional thread through the series.

"She's the de facto mother of the family. I like her, she's a decent person," says Graham of her alter ego, Abby. "I'd hope I'd be like her if humanity went belly up. It would quickly divide into good and bad, and it does make you feel which side you'd be on."

There's little doubt on which side Max Beesley's character, Tom, is on. A lifer given a chance of freedom when his prison guards all die from the virus, we first meet Tom looking in distaste as his plague-victim cell-mate gasps his last. In the scene I'm watching being filmed, Beesley's character is being hit in the small of the back with a rifle by a member of a rival gang. This is the version of the future as violent and feral, competed over by warring tribes, that might indeed have more sensitive souls reaching for the cyanide.

The strikingly poised Nikki Amuka-Bird, last seen hiring the services of the No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency in Anthony Minghella's version of the Alexander McCall Smith novels, plays the last government official left alive. Jenny Collins is a junior health minister in charge of responding to the virus outbreak, and the actress tells me she has been busy getting in touch with her inner Sarah Palin. "I've been following the American election closely," she says. "I'm not basing her character on anyone in particular; I've been interested in how much, for women like Palin and Hillary Clinton, to get to these positions of power you have to sacrifice your family life and your femininity."

Amuka-Bird's character is one of the more obvious departures from the 1970s original. Otherwise, there is a narrative similarity that will be familiar to fans of the earlier series. But not overly familiar. In a mischievous twist, one of the characters, played by a star name, is killed off in the first 20 minutes, while in the original story her character survives.

"There are a lot of people out there who would have seen the original series – more so now since it's been available on DVD," says Adrian Hodges, writer and executive producer. "I didn't want them thinking that they knew absolutely what was going to happen. Killing off a different major character from the original seemed a good way of doing that."

Did Hodges feel encouraged or oppressed by dedicated fans of the first Survivors? And did he consult with the various internet fan sites? "Not while writing it. At that stage, it's more pressure than I need. I'm delighted by fan sites – and I'm deeply excited by their interest – but also a little nervous. It'll be easier to have a dialogue with fans when it's out there."

Hodges, whose credits range from Charles II: the Power and the Passion to ITV1's dinosaur fantasy Primeval, was called in to write the scripts after lifelong Survivors fan and the remake's other executive producer, Sue Hogg, obtained the rights from the Terry Nation estate ("They trust us at the BBC," says Hogg). Nation, the British sci-fi TV legend who created the Daleks (but not – a common misapprehension – Doctor Who itself) wrote the first of the three series of Survivors before falling out with his producer, Terence Dudley. The writer wanted a darker ending than the BBC. This time, writer and producer are in accord. "We want to offer some hope," says Hodges.

Julie Graham tells me how actors on set had been passing round Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalyptic novel The Road. "We've all been reading it," she says. "There's a lovely quote in the book: it's all about keeping a little fire burning; the human condition has to prevail because otherwise, what's the point?"

Let's hope Terry Nation isn't turning in his grave at such optimism. This is the second major revival of a Nation drama this year – Sky One is busy remaking his 1978 sci-fi classic Blake's 7. So what's going on? "It's an overdue revival in British fantasy," says Hodges. "The 1970s was the last time we were strong in this area. As for Nation, he just had these remarkably powerful central ideas."

True, if a little depressing that we can't produce some strong, novel concepts of our own without recycling a former golden age of British fantasy. "Ah, but then, of course, there is also the commercial reality," says Hodges. "Audiences are getting harder to please – and brands like Doctor Who, Blake's 7 and Survivors are very attractive to commissioners."

Unlike most revivals – the 2003 reworking of the 1978 series Battleship Galactica, for example – Hodges' remake is not directly based on the original TV show. "The rights situation with the TV series was so hellishly complicated we just couldn't go there," he says. "Instead, the rights were obtained to the novel that Terry Nation wrote after he quit the show – based on his original scripts. That book's very dark."

Indeed, at the end of Nation's novel, the Abby figure is killed by her long-lost son. "We won't be using that ending," says Hodges, who is already in discussions about a second series – should sufficient viewers be attracted to this first one.

The source of the plague was not really explained in the original series of Survivors. A mysterious Chinaman was featured in the opening credits, suggesting the possibility of Cold War germ warfare. Hodges thinks that the idea of a worldwide pandemic is as timely as ever.

"Look at Sars and bird flu," he says. "Governments are already stockpiling vaccines. And pandemics can travel so fast these days."

Could the series be timely in other ways? Could Survivors even be read as a metaphor for the current financial crisis?

"I don't think I'd compare the vicissitudes of the stock market with the end of humanity, but what it does illustrate is how fragile everything feels; there we were, toddling along assuming that banks were absolutely safe and suddenly people are seriously discussing what would happen if the whole system collapsed. That's what Survivors is about in a way – just how delicate is our way whole way of life."

'Survivors' begins on BBC1 on 23 November