DVD review (region 2)
Directed by Christopher Miles
Starring Tim Brinton, Gregory Munroe, Carol Hazell, Shane Rimmer, Richard Marner, David Baxt, Alec Linstead, Norman Chancer
Release date 8 October 2007

It’s the late 1970s. During a TV investigation into the scientific ‘brain drain’, the team behind Science Report uncover a much bigger conspiracy…

Long sought after, 1977’s well-remembered Alternative 3 is finally available on DVD. Coming to this fresh, many may wonder what all the fuss was about. As ever, when something goes long unseen, it is mythologised. When it is finally re-viewed, it rarely lives up to the mix of memory and imagination that has supplanted the original. Alternative 3 is no different in this respect.

Conceived as an April Fool spoof, this fake documentary was instead broadcast in June (delayed by a strike!). The conceit here is that the makers of Science Report have uncovered a secret plan at the highest levels of government, the so-called Alternative 3. The great and the good have a plan to escape the doomed planet Earth. Alternatives 1 and 2 were to cut the population, thereby making the planet’s resources more sustainable, or to reduce consumption to achieve the same result. They were deemed to be impractical. The final choice – Alternative 3 – was to allow the ‘elite’ to escape and relocate on the moon or Mars!

Clearly mounted as an homage to Orson Welles’ 1938 radio version of War of the Worlds, Alternative 3 starts well enough, with unknown (or at least unrecognised) actors playing the TV presenters, researchers and witnesses. It all comes a bit unstuck when the (now) very familiar Shane Rimmer turns up as American astronaut “Bob Grodin”! Perhaps, though, the most unbelievable thing about it was the level of US–Soviet co-operation apparently needed to manage the secret project.

The show appears ahead-of-its-time with a focus on climate change, but this had been a big concern since the early-1970s and it is only our recent myopia when it comes to history that has made global warming seem like a sudden, new danger.

The faked footage of a 1962 landing on Mars, complete with underground “sandworm”, is well done and everyone involved plays the investigation/drama as straight as possible. Like the much later BBC spoof drama Ghostwatch, Alternative 3 supposedly provoked a strong reaction from hoodwinked viewers. It’s difficult to see, watching the show today, how anyone could have been remotely fooled (whether they recognised Rimmer from then-recent episodes of Space 1999 or 1977’s Bond movie, The Spy Who Loved Me, or not). Perhaps the drama tied in to the increasing doubt about the US moon landings?

Even though Anglia TV announced the show was a hoax, there are people to this day who still believe there is at least some truth to the allegations made – after all, the starting point of dealing with missing scientists was based on real (still unresolved) events.

There’s a good selection of extras, the prime item being a recently-recorded, intelligent, context-setting 30-minute discussion between writer David Ambrose, director Christopher Miles and presenter Tim Brinton. They reflect on the origins, making of and impact of their fake documentary, with a now elderly Brinton mischeviously trying to maintain the conceit that there may have been a hint of truth in Alternative 3. Oddly enough, Jeffrey Archer was considered as a possible presenter due to his gravitas!

There’s also a handful of stills and a very useful newspaper cutting archive, which are all nicely readable on screen. Brian J. Robb

VERDICT: 7/10
Inevitably, Alternative 3 cannot live up to the myth that has built up around it in the last 30 years. Fun, but not really significant. Best to stick with Ben Elton’s Stark.