The Tribe

1998

50-odd 30-minute episodes

SF elements

post-apocalypse

Review

A plague has wiped out all the adults on Earth, and the children must struggle to survive in a hostile world...

On the surface this is just a children's soap opera -- yet I find it strangely compelling. It's another one of that collection of Antipodean imaginative children's SF that adults can enjoy, too.

A large cast of fairly complex characters form The Tribe -- they take over a shopping mall, and struggle with everyday teen problems: relationships, pregnancy, eating disorders, disagreeing amongst themselves, finding water, hunting for food, treating broken limbs, building a wind-powered generator, being attacked and enslaved by other tribes, searching for a cure for the virus...

And it's full of little touches -- like the ever-changing but unremarked upon face painting -- that add the extra depth that makes this rise above the ordinary.

Rating: 3

[ unmissable | worth watching | passes the time | mind candy | unwatchable | unfinishable ]

reviewed 23 October 1999