Leofwine_draca THE MAD DEATH is one of those BBC TV series of yesteryear that left an impression on everybody who saw it, a bit like GHOSTWATCH did a decade later. This one's about a rabies epidemic in Britain, and for once the low budget works in the production's favour, making it a grimly realistic piece of social horror along the lines of THREADS, although not quite as dark as that (but then, what is?).There are three episodes on offer and the first is by far the best, charting the plight of a man who gets attacked by a rabies-infected fox and who gradually succumbs to the disease. There are some startling hallucination scenes and a lot of grim stuff that make this really work. The next two episodes get bogged down a bit in endless animal-shooting (not what I really want to see) although there's a good shopping centre set-piece. A little too much is made of a human villain, a crazy cat lazy who contributes to the outbreak. The likes of Barbara Kellerman and Paul Brooke work well in their parts and the miniseries offers a neat snapshot of Britain during the era.

TheExpatriate700 Having heard so much about it online, The Mad Death ultimately turned out to be a disappointment when I finally obtained it on DVD. The main highlights turned out to be its opening sequence and an eerie synthesizer score.The main problem with the miniseries is that it is not particularly well written. Many of the characters are too dumb to care about, picking up animals that are clearly rabid even to an untrained eye, and not bothering to have animal bites checked out by a doctor. Furthermore, the film has a certain element of predictability about it, with many of the plot developments telegraphed in advance.Moreover, there is a disturbing lack of violent animal attacks in the film. If one purchases a film called The Mad Death about a rabies epidemic, the least one would expect would be a good, violent mauling every fifteen minutes or so. Most of the violence here is directed toward the animals, mainly gunshots to the head.

Opaque It didn't go far enough in the portrayal of the rabies victims (although it does a fairly job for the first), but we don't get to see the effect on the child victim either. But my main problem is with the size, strength and back-up of the response to the outbreak. As we have seen with the Foot and Mouth outbreaks, even in the past, MAFF and other agencies had the policy of strict containment and kill and burn when necessary approach. Even back in the 60's this was the case so why was there so much pussyfooting around? The scene in the pub for example, he should have been able to call in the police and got those people arrested and the publican closed down for not reporting it. And he certainly should have been armed as well.When the old woman released the dogs they should have gone straight to her house en-masse, arrested her and killed all her animals, instead one person turns up. Pathetic.It was a very good film though in general although lacking in 'power'in terms of solutions. Even with the way they 'sorted it out' there would be no way of saying whether it had got out of the containment area, going by the time elapsed (2 weeks) a 12 mile area around the first outbreak is rather naive in the least.Considering how easily rabies can be transmitted the danger was totally underestimated. A modern version of this would be interesting, at least in this film people could vaccinate their pets, I can't see that being the case these days.

claireryan_2003 I remember this film. It was a three part series on BBC1 if I remember rightly. Every time I was In church since and All Things Bright And Beautiful has been played, the theme of this film comes straight into my head (almost like a hollow whispering of the song). In fact as I sit here now I can hear that dog at the end of the film barking away in the car then going into an eerie whine. The plot was devastating to see what would happen if our country were to have the Rabies Virus - Quite Uncontrolable as you would imagine by all the OTT animal lovers in the programme, making it an impossible task to get hold of the carriers. Brilliant work. Come on BBC give us something for our money. This is one that does no need updating.