In the UK in the 80's, reminders of the threat of a rabies outbreak were everywhere. The iconic poster with the skull and the jagged writing was put up on the most unlikely of public buildings, public information films would jump out during teatime ad breaks, and newspapers would print the story of the occasional instance where someone resident in the UK would contract rabies abroad and die horribly having returned. Make no mistake, the paranoia was huge.
We're taken quickly through the sequence of events that causes rabies to establish in the UK. A French woman smuggles in her cat that's been infected by a fox, and brings it when attending a party amongst the gentry in the Scottish highlands. The cat gets loose, and having scratched the lovable collie owned by one of the attendees, is run over by a partygoer, its dying body being feasted on by a feral fox.
Enter Tom Siegler, an eccentric US expat played by UFO's Ed Bishop, who, when stopping to call his mistress from a phone box, notices a docile-looking fox lying by the road. For reasons only he would know, he decides the fox might make for a pet. Unbeknown to him, it is rabid, and ultimately causes his downfall.
The fox infects him in slightly implausible circumstances, and thereafter we see him decline until he progressively experiences the symptoms of rabies until he is hallucinating and convulsing in terrifying ways until his death is a merciful release. Unfortunately, he's also infected his mistress through a misplaced lovebite.
The second episode of this 3-part series examines the public reaction to the outbreak. The locals watch angrily as their pets are impounded, and we get to know Miss Stonecroft, a deranged old woman with nothing else in her life than to take in stray animals, who finds herself in conflict with the team tasked with combating the outbreak, vet Mike Hilliard and Dr Anne Maitland. Back stories include seeing the death of Siegler's mistress, and a rabid stray alsatian terorrising shoppers in East Kilbride shopping centre. A wordless season in which a group of seemingly inbred locals confront Hilliard in a pub is in its own way really unpleasant.
This episode brings one of the saddest scenes, as we see Siegler's mistress slip away in the same manner he did, in an oxygen tent in an isolation room. Just before she dies, unable to speak, she mouths the words to Dr Maitland asking if Siegler is there, Maitland's casual reply to say that he is not is borderline cruel.
The third and final episode ends in a bit of a bloodbath. Miss Stonecroft has released a number of impounded animals, which causes the infected area to increase. Hilliard coldly calls in the army to cull the escaped animals, and any bit of wildlife that gets in the way. We don't see anyone dying from rabies, but this still includes some harrowing scenes, including when Dr Maitland visits an increasingly unhinged Miss Stonecroft. Things calm down once the slaughter is over, and the series ends at Glasgow airport, where Hilliard is thanked by the DEFRA minister played brilliantly by Jimmy Logan, whilst the woman whose fault this was all along returns home to France. Everyone lives happily ever after. Or do they?
It's debatable if this fully communicates the real horror of rabies, but it still stands the test of time nearly 40 years later. The scenes in the first episode in particular are especially horrifying, with creative effects. It's basically every rabies public information film of the 70's and 80's rolled into a mini series. This is the risk if you smuggle an animal, this is how you die, these are the draconian measures that would be brought in to control it.
It's probably the second most scary 80's BBC drama to "Threads". The good bits speak for themselves. The surprising bits are how the best characters are the more peripheral ones. The jealous and controlling lord of the manor, the bumbling but likable PR man, and the magnificent cigar-munching minister.are examples.
The bad bits centre around the unnecessary love triangle between Hilliard, Maitland and the deeply unpleasant country gent, and that the parts which should have gone further don't, and the bits which go a little too far are left alone. . That being said, it was a bit of an own goal to set this series amongst the wealthy and the privileged in the Scottish highlands. It's too remote to bring home the message that this could happen in your neck of the woods, and to regular people.
That doesn't take away that this is a classic and genuinely disturbing piece of 80's cult television, which if you haven't checked out, you should.
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