Some things struck me while watching Survivors, BBC's remake of a 1970s sci-fi drama about the people left alive after a bad flu wipes out most of the world's population.

It took a remarkably short time for total anarchy to grab hold. Within two days, the 'survivors' were cracking each other's heads open, blowing up petrol stations, shooting at one another, selling their bodies for canned goods and starting chicken farms. Cripes! What a crowd of drama queens! It all seems like a bit of an over-reaction to me. I soon realise that these people would probably resort to cannibalism if they missed lunch.

For a country whose population has supposedly been ravaged, there sure seems to be a lot of people running about looking panicked and bumping into one another in supermarkets. I did an on-screen headcount and estimated that, at most, 10% of the population could possibly have been wiped out by the killer virus. Admittedly, given the apparent state of the country and the aforementioned anarchy, it was probably the 10% who do all the work (you know who you are) so I suppose it does constitute a real disaster.

The characters respond to the deaths of their families, friends and human society in remarkably different ways. Abby Grant (Julie Graham from Bonekickers) rends her clothes, pulls her hair, and weeps and keens; sexy doctor Anya Raczynski (Zoe Tapper) considers suicide; seedy, constipated criminal Tom Price (Max Beesley) kills somebody; and pretty playboy Al Sadiq (Phillip Rhys) is... slightly miffed. I was puzzled by this latter choice. The way I figure it, they just wrote the part according to what they thought the actor could manage. "Right Philip, your whole family has been killed. Civilisation is over. You might die at any second. You're a little bit annoyed. (Please let him be able to do 'annoyed')".

The real discovery is, of course, child actor Chahak Patel, whose innovative "respond-to-lines-a-scene-too-late" approach really brought something new to the table.

In real life, nobody says things like "I'm not the parenting kind" or "I travel better alone". People only say things like that in shows like this where every line is functional and every character is stock. In real life, people don't walk around with signposts telling you what sort of dramatic character they are ('loner' or 'playboy' or 'mother hen' or 'whore', for example). In reality, these people passive-aggressively let you feel like they are the parenting kind, or that they travel better with a friend for company, and then you wake up one morning to find yourself all alone with a hastily scrawled note, an IOU, and a half-eaten box of Ferrero Rocher.

And, finally, see that flu there on the screen? See the people coughing, fainting, sweating and ultimately dying – that's how I feel. And you said it was just a bit of a cold.

So, in episode one of Survivors, a wise middle-aged Scotsman waxed lyrical about all the skills people would have to relearn because the world had changed. Skills like the ability to shake five post-it notes off your face? (I asked the television screen). Or the ability to hold grapes to each of your nostrils with the power of nasal suction? Perhaps the ability to tie a tie with socks on your hands? Or to throw an orange from one hand to another with a towel over your head? Y... you're not interested in such skills? Y... you want somebody who knows about animal-husbandry, irrigation, basic first-aid or unarmed combat? I... I'm not welcome in your post-apocalyptic dystopia?

(Puffing myself up and standing to my full height) well, YOU, sir are not welcome on Colm and Jim Jim's Home Run, a quiz show on RTÉ 1, where such abilities are appreciated and which is also guaranteed to make anyone over the age of 30 crave the sweet release of death. It's hyperactive, filled with catchphrases ("drop the prop, drop the prop, drop the prop"), audience participation (like a Leni Riefenstahl film about a panto), inane contestant confessions ("I was a gorilla in a pantomime once!") and it's almost inspiringly annoying. Colm and Jim Jim call down various contestants from "the balcony of hope" to choose someone from somewhere else in the world to answer questions on their behalf and perform ludicrous tasks (like the aforementioned post-it exercise) via webcam.

When they're not being terribly annoying and exhausting, Colm and Jim Jim can be funny. "I'm sitting here between what looks, from down there, like two identical twins," says Jim Jim from the stage. "But which on closer inspection... turns out to be just two men with glasses." That bit made me laugh out loud.

For the most part, however, this is another programme in a long line of programmes (probably originating with Chris Evans' Don't Forget your Toothbrush) filled with loud noises, bright colours, and maniacally screaming crowds, essentially designed to block out loudly that little voice in the back of the post-Celtic Tiger, post-catholic, pre-flu pandemic Irish brain which says, "Oh no! What if it's all meaningless? What if we're just a randomness floating in space and some day... we... just... die?"

Interesting question! And one which also obsessed Quaker scientist Arthur Eddington, as movingly evoked in BBC's Einstein and Eddington.

This one-off drama, co-produced with HBO, told the story of two very different men; the obscure, scruffy, charismatic, and authority-goading German, Albert Einstein (Andy Serkis), who developed a new theory of life, the universe and everything; and the kindly, principled and proper Englishman of authority, Eddington (David Tennant), who, after World War I, brought an expedition to Africa, photographed an eclipse, and proved, to a previously indifferent scientific community, that Einstein had a point.

It's a testament to some thorough but economic scripting and some top-notch acting talent that, as well as documenting their wartime correspondence, the film also manages to fit in Eddington's conflicted faith, conscientious objection, and tragic love for his best friend William Marsten (who died at the German gas attack at Ypres), as well as Einstein's crazed work habits, troubled relationship with his family, problems with authority, and adulterous relationship with his cousin.

It does all this while clearly explaining how Newton's gravity-centred theories were displaced in favour of Einsteinian relativity. Oh, and if you're still worried about the whole meaninglessness question (sorry about that), at the presentation of his findings, Eddington said that in the theories of Einstein he "could hear God thinking".

Which is lovely. And it's a nice antidote to watching civilisation ineptly falling apart in Survivors and hearing an "empty universe shouting" in the works of Colm and Jim Jim.

pfreyne@tribune.ie