The Comic Strip, Part 13 - This is not your father's post-apocalypse

"Slags" - February 11, 1984

Wow.

Holy Flipping Wow.

I was having trouble pulling stills from "The Beat Generation" because there were so many excellent shots - I ended up throwing in the towel and just grabbing one at random. This is the same deal. Every shot - every moment is perfect. Iconic. Wow.

The story takes place in a run-down, blade runner type of near-future. We can tell this because the protagonists are all dudded up in New-Romantic era post-punk club gear, and because it is filmed in London's South Bank - where every British produced vision of a rundown near-future was filmed from the late sixties to the early nineties. Passion (Dawn French - we know her better now as "The Vicar of Dibley") and Little Sister (Jennifer Saunders - we know her better now as "Edina Monsoon" (familiar name...) on Absolutely Fabulous) are released from prison (The Bankside power station - we know it better now as The Tate Modern). Before they were put away, they were the leaders of The Slags, who controlled the area with their naughty post-punk mayhem. While they were away, The Slags went their separate ways and a new gang came in to take over; The Hawaiians.

That's right. Flower shirt, cocoanut umbrella drinks, ukulele music. Hawaiians.

The Slags regroup and challenge The Hawaiians to a rumble, but the night before, Ricki, the leader of the Hawaiians and Little Sister fall in love - leading to the inevitable tragic conclusion.

Post-apocalyptic visions were big in the eighties - Mad Max and all that - it was some sort of comfort that as the world fell apart, us young whippersnappers could adapt with it. One of the scenes in this episode was filmed in a well known street in Shad Thames. This is a group of Victorian-era warehouses that have a complex series of bridges connecting them. Almost from the moment this area was created, it was known as a bit dodgy sort of a place, and into the eighties the long-abandoned buildings only found use as a film location. Now it has been yuppified. The once empty buildings now contain spacious (and expensive) condos, art galleries, design firms and posh restaurants. Entropy works in ways more complicated than one might have imagined.