This six part ITV drama (also known as ‘Cruel Earth’ in some markets) was a big deal in 1999, allegedly. People head to Sheffield on a train. Only the really annoying Harriet Ambrose knows that Earth is about to be hit by an asteroid and she has a handy canister of cryogenic material in her backpack. As you do.
Also on board is a thief, a cop, a woman and her kids, an old biddy, a pregnant woman and other assorted annoying types. The train crashes in a tunnel and the cyro goop freezes everyone. They’re stuck in the tunnel for an unknown amount of time until the cyro goop just wears off - how? Why?
They climb out of the tunnel and yell a lot. They overlook the massive overgrowth, the bath in the bushes, the wrecked cars and ruined city. Harriet Ambrose won’t share much info and the idiots won’t listen to her tale of asteroid SD426 anyway. She spells it out: a rock 12 miles in diameter has struck the Earth and they slept through the apocalypse and societal collapse.
The morons will not listen, what do they think happened? Harriet blathers about an Ark where people were also cyro-frozen to survive the top secret impact. The morons ignore her and stomp around ignoring the wall of missing posters, ruined houses and the dog pack. Some morons die, sexual slurs are hurled around, the thief finds a van with his best friend and girlfriend’s skeletons inside. They killed themselves. He gets over it. Acid rain rains down and the thief decides to take off in the van which is still working cue screaming. There is so much screaming and stupidity that the gang overlook a nearby grave that has a handmade plaque that says 2012. I don’t think I’ll bother with 1x02 - 1x06 - this was really awful.
Best Lines:
“This water has a very high heavy metals content. Safer to drink from a toilet bowl than this.”
“This rock hits Zambia and half of Sheffield falls over?”
“An asteroid the size of a football could hit your house and make a crater that swallows your whole street plus a few adjacent ones.”
“Sleep it out until the planet’s fit for habitation again.”
“Frozen in a train carriage while an asteroid from Mars blows up the planet.”