PLAY FOR TODAY

Z For Zachariah

TX : 28th February 1984
Director : Anthony Garner
Script : Written by Anthony Garner based on the book by Robert O'Brien

Synopsis : The valley, because of its geographical shape, has evaded the effects of radiation fall-out. Ann Burden, 16, is alone. Her parents left to seek another life and never returned. Ann learns how to survive and builds a life for hreself within the world of the valley. Into the valley comes a scientist, bearing the scars of war. The film traces the development of their relationship.

Notes : The author Robert O Brien was born Robert Leslie Conly on 11th January, 1918, in Brooklyn, New York. After the war he began a career as a journalist which included work for such internationally respected publications as National Geographic Magazine (evenatually becoming Senior Assistant Editor). It was only in the final decade of his life that he decided to try his hand at writing fiction. His first book, a children's novel, was entitled The Silver Crown and published in 1968. This was rapidly followed with Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH and the adult suspense novel A Report From Group 17. Zachariah was his final book, publsihed posthumously. He died on the 5th March, 1973 at the age of fifty-five.

Anthony Andrews was most famous at the time of Z for Zachariah’s
broadcast for his role in the epic series Brideshead Revisited, but
had also appeared in the 1982 adaptation of Ivanhoe, Danger UXB,
Upstairs Downstairs and the Dennis Potter play A Beast with Two Backs

Pippa Hinchley later went on to appear in series such as Morgan’s
Boy, East of Ipswich, Coronation Street, Bugs, Holby City and The Bill.

David Daker has been acting since the early 1960 and his most famous
roles came in Porridge and as Ken Boon’s business partner in Boon.

Bit-part actor David Davenport had appeared in The Adventures of
Robin Hood, Crossroads and Dad’s Army prior to his role in Z for
Zachariah

Composer Geoffrey Burgon is a stalwart of British television, having
written scores for Doctor Who, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,
Brideshead Revisited, Island at War, and the 2002 version of The
Forstye Saga.

The Radio Times supported the transmission of this production by trailing it with the following article on 25th February, 1984:

A Clean Liver

Early last summer - between acting engagements in Mexico, Tunisia and Los Angeles - Anthony Andrews spent a month in a remote valley in mid-Wales.

He had been cast as John Loomis in the film of Robert O'Brien's Z For Zachariah. Loomis, is possibly, the only male survivor of a nuclear attack on Britain, an opportunist boffin who, with the aid of a prototype plastic radiation capsule, arrives at the Welsh valley. It is a 'meteorological enclave', virtually untouched by the holocaust. 'It is not far-fetched,' insists Andrews. 'The principle of the film holds up. Apparently there are such enclaves.' Even they valley where they filmed, he says, had 'its own weather', the crew and actors frequently working in rain while the rest of Wales was steaming in sunshine.

Andrew's initial discomfort during the first few days in the valley concerned his costume - a heavy, inflexible but fully functioning radiation suit: 'It was all absolutely practical stuff, including the air pump and filter. Once I'd got in on there was always a few precarious seconds before someone remembered to hit the switch on the oxygen pump. I felt hot and trapped...and breathless.' Later, the character suffers radiation sickness: 'I dug deep in order to understand what happens to a body which is exposed,' explains Andrews.

'In the first stage of the illness you are vomiting constantly. Then there is a lull of about ten days during which you feel better. You imagine that somehow, miraculously, you are cured. The second stage comes as a cruel blow. Anaemia, cancer, nausea. You lose your hair, your teeth, your balance. Your gums bleed. The physical manifestations of the illness are horrific. Sometimes it took four hours to complete my make-up, to present a convincing victim of radiation sickness. That's what was impossibly depressing - being so involved in being that ill. It made an indelible impression on me. I am now much more aware of the horrors of war.'

Was he hinting that he had drawn some specific political lessons from his experience? Andrew's answer is positively ministerial in its imprecision and its guardedness 'I am,' he says, 'for peace at any price', but will not be pressed to reveal any opinion more intimate or more immoderate. He is, off screen, as mannered and as gentlemanly as his on-screen self. 'Ah, the so-called image,' he says wearily. 'That's a creation of the press. I have, in fact, played an enormous variety of roles.'

His list includes a Cockney soldier, a journalist, a gent from the American South - and, of course, a common-or-garden holocaust survivor. But his most successful roles, from his first schoolboy appearance as the Goddess Athena to one of his latest as the Emperor Nero, have virtually all been commissioned, knighted or titled: the unflappable Lieutenant Brian Ash in Danger UXB, Sir Percy Blakeney in The Scarlet Pimpernel, Lord Silverbridge in The Pallisers - and the not-so-gentlemanly gentleman, Sebastian Flyte in Brideshead Revisisted. Top drawer to a man.

Yet there is nothing patrician about Anthony Andrew's own background. It is shabby-genteel, semi-theatrical, rather than solidly middle class. His father was conductor of the BBC Revue Orchestra but died when Anthony was five. His mother, a dancer, struggled to feed and educate five children. The Freemasons helped by sending Anthony on a scholarship to the Royal Masonic School in Hertfordshire. It polished his accent, but little else.

Academically, Andrews was a bit of duffer. He'd enjoyed his brief glory as a goddess and acting rather attracted him. But with a little prompting from a wiser council he suppressed the notion. 'My life was heading nowhere,' he says. 'I knew I was hopeless at routine and that I had to avoid the so-called norms. But what could I do? I indulged in fantasies. I chased shadows. I went into catering and imagined myself in a pin-striped suit, managing the Savoy. I dabbled in farming and journalism, too.' But his actual, humble duties of selling farm cream to restaurants and letting advertising space on a local newspaper did not satisfy Andrew's self-image as press baron or gentleman landowner.

'I was frightened, that's all. Frightened of the real desire, the real drive, which was to become an actor,' he says. 'I was scared stiff of going to drama school and being the worst student there. Then I'd have to ditch my acting ambitions and wasn't prepared to take the chance. I wanted to go straight into playing a real part before a real audience.' He joined the Chichester Festival Theatre - but, initially, appeared on the stage only between performances: with a dustpan and brush. Finally, small parts were offered: 'But when, at last, I was standing on a stage with a line to speak, I asked myself, "Am I really up to this?". And then the whole self-doubting examination began again.'

Anthony Andrews learnt the rudiments of his craft the hard way - on the boards, in front of provincial audiences in small town reps. His 'second education' was at the hands of Sir John Gielgud during the year-long run of Alan Bennett's Forty Years On: Andrews had a minor part as a schoolboy but spent the off-stage hours studying Gielgud's technique from the wings. Slowly his own technique, and his own career, formed. 'I have discovered that I am not a very actorly kind of person,' he says (though he is readily generous about colleagues, describing 'young Pippa' Hinchley, who stars with him in Z For Zachariah, as being 'quite extraordinarily receptive and professional for one so young').

'I find it narrow-minded to be concerned with nothing but "the business". That isn't enough for me. I want a variety of friends, not only actors, a variety of work, a variety of challenges. I am always looking for roles to stretch me.'

This is the post-Brideshead actor speaking. Success, evidently, has gentrified Anthony Andrews, (BAFTA Best Actor 1981, Britain's Best Dressed Man 1982) and left him confident, businesslike, immaculate - and impentrable. But, whatever the background, the 'foreground' - marriage to Georgina Simpson, only child of the late Piccadilly store chief, their two children, dogs, horses, nanny and chauffeur - is impeccably high born. 'Ah, the so-called image' once again.

The programme also prompted several letters which were published in the Radio Times on the 24th March following transmission of the play and these are also reproduced by:

Z For Zachariah: A Warning To The World
The BBC Play For Today: Z For Zachariah presented a controversial subject delivered in both a frightening and realistic way, with excellent performances by Anthony Andrews and Pippa Hinchley and a subject that held the attention from beginning to end. Andrew's appearance went from bad to worse as the radiation sickness too hold, and top marks must go to both him and his make-up assistant for such realism. The play certainly made me think and pray that such a situation never arises for any of us.

Jan K Smith, Uxbridge, Middlesex

Male Domination
Congratulations on Z For Zachariah. It said it all: our whole civilisation is based on male domination and male aggression. Either we learn to change that, or we shall die of it.

Paula Atherton, Edinburgh

Personal Drama
I was greatly affected by Z For Zachariah. The personal drama of two strangers trying to live together in isolation, and the growing sense of unease as Loomis sought to possess Ann and the valley, then the tension as he tried to cripple and capture her, kept me hooked to the end.
Full marks to all concerned, especially Pippa Hinchley as Ann, who left me wanting to know how she would fare in the deadness.

Terry Firth, Dewsbury, West Yorkshire

Myth
Was Z For Zachariah meant to be taken seriously? Are viewers expected to believe in the miraculous survival of people 'protected' by a valley and a person 'getting better' after a high dose of radiation? Such stuff myths are made of! Although beautifully filmed, produced and acted, the play insulted our intelligences. If the vomiting, and subsequent symptoms were calculated to shock, God knows what the real thing would do.
Let's hope that the next time the BBC depicts nuclear after-effects, it will be honest and get it right.

Brenda Steele, Wetherby, West Yorkshire

Distressed
I was left feeling very distressed that such a serious subject was treated so poorly. The production had the opportunity to open a large audience's eyes to the horror and devastation a nuclear would cause and yet did precious little to do so. The play merely showed that even in such stressful times people would still be unable to find the ability to unite, work together and treat each other with humane respect. Is this the way we are educated today? Or is the author's outlook and perception so male chauvinistic and twisted that he views the world thus, nuclear war or not?
The play seemed to become a feud over property and a question of the violation of human rights...It made me even more aware of what a male-dominated, aggressive and increasingly materialistic world we exist in...

(Ms) Harriet Rogers, Canterbury, Kent

Did They See It?
Having enjoyed Z For Zachariah so much, I listened with interest to see what the panel on Did You See...? thought about it (4 March BBC 2). Well! Did any of them watch it properly? Russell Davies introduced by speaking of a stream that was 'presumably unpolluted' - the play had gone at great pains to show this. William Cooper was more concerned that it wasn't dark (how pedantic!); Elaine Morgan thought it was too long, so she must have missed the tension.
All the panellists seemed to think that Loomis tried to kill Ann and couldn't understand why he shot her in the foot. Surely he tried to rape her, to possess her and when she left tried to starve her, and when that didn't work shoot her in the foot so she couldn't run and have to return to the house. I think the panel missed the whole point of the play and seemed to expect a 16-year old girl to have the psychological maturity of a much older woman. Does it really matter that the valley survived? Surely the author wanted to put two people together alone in the world, and see what would happen...

Mrs S Whitmarsh, Dinnington, South Yorkshire

Biblical Prophecy
I had to write to say how much I enjoyed Z For Zachariah. Anthony Andrews was superb, as usual, and Pippa Hinchley played a sensitive and convincing Ann Burden.
I found the title intriguing. In the book it is explained that this came from a Biblical alphabet book Ann had learned to read from as a child (A For Adam, etc). I wonder, though, if the author was aware that the prophecies contained in the book of Zachariah could well refer to one of the effects on the human body of a nuclear explosion: "Their flesh shall consume away while they stand upon their feet, and their eyes shall consume away in their holes, and their tongues shall consume away in their mouths" (Zachariah 14, vs 12). The next verse might well refer to the behaviour of survivors: "They shall lay hold every on the hand of his neighbour, and his hand shall rise up against the hand of his neighbour."
Was Robert O'Brien aware of these verses when he titled his book or was it coincidence? Whichever was the case, the play was a beautiful if horrifying account of two survivors of war which must never happen...

Wendy-Ann Madeley, Birmingham

Radio Times Reply: O'Brien's widow has indicated that these passages could well have sowed the seed for his idea.

Author's credit
Isn't it necessary to give authorship credit where credit is due? Z For Zachariah was written by Robert C O'Brien, and the setting was probably New York State. I failed to see his name mentioned among the credits in Radio Times or on the screen.

John B Tucker, Pill, Avon

Radio Times Reply: The author of the novel was credited on the screen at the beginning of Z For Zachariah.