This was hyped up with a massive amount of trailers and one of the things I dislike about a lot of programmes these days is the hype they receive . I also noticed it was one of those very multinational productions like THE GRID so I was expecting a very mid Atlantic flavour full of bed hopping , mawkishness , action scenes , really poor dialogue and of course a happy ending but what I got was something unexpected
The first episode is a bizarre mix involving soap opera , disaster movie build up and an episode of the BBC science show HORIZON . The characters are introduced and some of them are interviewed for camera . Instantly I thought this was a mistake since the interviews are conducted in the past even ie if they are interviewed then we know they'll be seeing the final credits and won't die . However when the supervolcano erupts setting off a chain reaction of other volcanic eruptions it becomes clear that the interviewees are out of the line of fire and the ones in danger haven't been interviewed hence they might die . So much for my conclusion that we'll be having an optimistic ending . What does become clear is that the human race may suffer the fate of the dinosaurs !
SUPERVOLCANO is gripping , informative and downbeat . It's maybe not as shocking as the BBC docudrama THREADS but in its own way it's just as effective . It's not flawless , for example the special effects look a little too like CGI in some scenes and there's bits that just don't ring true like people in Britain stocking up on food and water in the face of a coming disaster , sorry but we don't do that in this country - We just sit back in an apathetic manner in front the television with a cup of tea in our hands . Brits give fatalism a bad name . If I have one serious problem then it's the fact the narrative is too short . We find out that the ash in the atmosphere has blocked out much of the suns light meaning we have a " Nuclear winter " effect whereby even at the height of Summer the Earth's temperature will cool leading to all sorts of geographical disasters like famine in the third world where millions will die but this is only referred to in passing while another effect - The collapse of the American economy and all that entails - is not mentioned at all . But despite the flaws this is a pretty good speculative drama simply because iit's all too credible
