Z for Zachariah (1984)

This two-hour feature was one of the last productions of the BBC’s Play for Today and depicted events in a Welsh valley after a nuclear holocaust.

16-year-old Ann Burden (Pippa Hinchley) lives alone on a remote country farm protected from the fallout by an idiosyncratic geographic feature of the valley. She has learned how to survive and build a life for herself within the sheltered world of the valley.

Into the valley comes scientist John Loomis (Anthony Andrews), protected by a prototype radiation suit but ill from exposure to radiation in the nearby stream.

Ann nurses him back to health but when Loomis realises they are the only survivors of the holocaust, his sexual desires begin to take over

The show attracted much British press attention as it featured Anthony Andrews – then a hot property because of Brideshead Revisited and seriously miscast here as a sexual predator – in scenes of full-frontal nudity.

Based on a book of the same name by the American writer Robert C O’Brien.

John Loomis
Anthony Andrews
Ann Burden
Pippa Hinchley
Father
David Daker
Mother
Angela Galbraith
Joseph
Andrew Hughes
Mr Johnson
David Davenport
Mrs Johnson
Nickola Sterne
Faro
Brett