First viewed : 10 September 1981
This was a six-part adaptation of John Wyndham's science fiction classic and was partly funded by Australia's ABC although there are no concessions to Oz in the casting.
John Duttine ( again ) starred as Bill Masen , a temporarily blinded man who misses a spectacular meteor shower which has left everyone who did watch it permanently blind. In the chaos a group of genetically engineered mobile and carnivorous plants , the Triffids, have got loose and started preying on the incapacitated humans. Bill finds some other sighted survivors including Maurice Colbourne and Stephen Yardley ( yet again ) who argue about how to rebuild society or whether it is better simply to find an island retreat.
The show was moderately absorbing and the special effects were quite good. The Triffids themselves were a little Dr Who-ish but then again few plants look inherently terrifying so looking like giant sticks of rhubarb was as good an idea as anything else. It also suffered a bit from having a pre-watershed slot ; a reasonable injection of sex and violence would have spiced it up a bit without compromising the story.
The series has been repeated three times on BBC Four over the past decade so the Beeb are still proprietorial over it i.e you can't watch it on You Tube without coughing up.
When it comes to Brit sci-fi, I've always been in the JG Ballard school. So this kind of "cosy apocalypse" (can't remember where I read that term) never quite appealed to me.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I once lived in a dingy bedsit in which weeds from the tree outside and begun to seep in through the ancient window frames, prompting my dad to amusingly claim I would suffer from a Triffid-style death.
The term is actually "cosy catastrophe" and was coined by Brian Aldiss with Wyndham specifically in mind ( although he exempted "The Chrysalids" from the criticism ).
ReplyDeleteYes. It's a very English way of dealing with the end of the world... "cup of tea, anyone?"
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