"It's like a disease ... it's spreading ... I don't know how, I don't know why ... it's like ... everyone ... everyone I've seen ... has caught it ... has got it."
Meet PCs Rob Singleton and Lucy Margan, and freelance journalist Dave Matthews. They are holed up in Dave's house, the door barricaded against someone - or something - outside. Rob tells their story: about their response to an emergency call to a mysterious London clinic earlier in the day, about the chaos and violence they found there, about the disease which seems to have escaped from someone's laboratory - a disease which spreads with alarming speed and which turns its victims into psychopathic maniacs within moments.
The disease has escaped onto the streets. And it's happening NOW.
Comment
Buried away in the midnight slot on Christmas Day was a quite remarkable piece of television. We've all seen spoof broadcasts before, from Orson Wells' groundbreaking War of the Worlds to the fake documentary footage of The Blair Witch Project via the incredibly scary Ghostwatch presentation, but trust Urban Gothic to take it one step further.
The transmission takes the form of a PC-based webcast initially, before the picture is lost and we're plunged into sound only for a few moments until another camera is attached. Our police heroes are intent on getting their message out to the world, and they manage it amid flashes of static, the Channel 5 logo, and a very realistic C5 News presenter on an authentic set (it's such a shame that these sequences, which work so well today, will date the most).
The plot is simple: a virus/disease has escaped and is spreading, turning those infected into madmen. We see the effects of an experiment recorded from a security camera, where the subject literally smashes his head open against his cell wall. We see Rob Singleton take the camera upstairs to try and show us what is happening outside, only to be attacked by a knife-wielding woman. Finally, the police are overcome, and the camera is taken on a mad dash through the house, crazy people running about, blood and missing limbs aplenty, before the remaining survivor, Computer expert Dave Matthews, is dragged lifeless along the passage.
It's gritty and real, and, in a far less innocent age, liable to cause some concern amongst viewers. Maybe we're all too sophisticated these days, and expect anything on TV to be fake (some people believed that the horrendous events of September 11th, when the World Trade Centre was attacked in America, were some sort of astonishing Hollywood effects sequence ...).
Overall an impressive and bravura piece of television, which will probably be totally overlooked by viewers.
Notes
The pre-title sequence to The End was actually the beginning of another episode of Urban Gothic which The End cuts into as a pirate broadcast. Writer Andrew Cull takes up the story: 'The 'fake' episode written specifically for this purpose actually has itīs own entire plot line and is called Flicker. The character you see at the beginning of The End is a writer called Stella Macdonald. The script was originally written so that Stellaīs story would begin to unfold and then be cut into by The End making the whole pirate broadcast thing more convincing than it is in the episode you saw. Basically Stella is a screenwriter who has lost the ability to be scared by anything, she writes horror to try to get that feeling back again.'
Author
Andrew Cull began writing whilst at University. He has penned two screenplays: A Death in the Family and The Dead Sea, which he revised with Philip Saville. Currently he is working on Web of Mystery for television and a screenplay The Disappeared.
| Credits | |
| Written by | Andrew Cull |
| Directed by | Otto Bathurst |
| Starring | Alison King (Stella Macdonald)
Karl Haynes (Rob Singleton) Jacqueline Defferary (Lucy Morgan) Blake Ritson (Dave Matthews) Sian Jones (Newsreader) Kate Fleetwood (Woman) |
Click here for full credit list | |
Click here for behind the scenes article and more pictures. | |
