The Day of the Triffids

I'd wanted to see this BBC version of DOTT ever since I read about it in a sci-fi magazine. I first saw it on TV a few years ago. I recently bought the DVD and the series remains as great as ever. The three main performances of John Duttine, Maurice Colbourne and Emma Relph are very good and they are helped by a great supporting cast. Thwe Triffids themselves do look a bit plastic but they were realised brilliantly. The music by Christopher Gunning compliments the story very well.

The Triffids themselves are meant to be a secondary threat as the main problem is the breakdown of society as most of the populace is rendered blind. The hysteria is shown in full detail and the writer adds a nice conspiracy theory in the final episode. I'm glad that the series is now available on DVD for a new audience to see. Having read bits of the book I can tell that the adaptation is very faithful. I strongly recommend DOTT to sci-fi fans everywhere.

When an asteroid shower passes over the earth, most of the world stops and watches the "once in a lifetime" spectacle. However the vast majority of the world find themselves blinded. This leaves the world at the mercy of the Triffids – a strange species of plant that can move and attack humans, but whose value as an oil resource has seen them farmed and controlled around the world. In a London hospital, Bill Masen is confined to his hospital bed with his eyes bandaged up after a Triffid sting at work. The day after the shower, Bill wakes to find everything quiet with seemingly nobody around to take the bandages off. He stumbles out into the day to find the population blind and, with society quickly crumbling, Triffids seem like just one of the problems to contend with.

I quite liked the film version for what it was but it was quite different from the book. This BBC mini-series though, is much more faithful to the source material and produces three hours of television that are more about the people than the plants of the title. If you consider the six episodes, the Triffids are not present throughout and sometimes they are no more than yet another thing in the background. The main thrust is actually about the breakdown of society, the choices the seeing survivors have to make at the early stages and the later stages. As such it is a very British piece as of course there is the polite indecisions and stiff upper lips that see survival accompanied by a certain amount of shame and frustration.

Hannam's direction is good as he works well with the sets and effects he has available to him. He has a good script to work with that puts food for thought onto the table consistently, while he also maintains a fairly constant sense of fear in relation to the lack of everything we would expect. In this regard the early episodes were the stronger. Of course the effects are limited but the Triffids themselves are actually pretty good and, if walking, man-eating plants did exist then I imagine they may look like this. The sets are quite cheap and have dated as badly as the clothes etc but this is not really a problem since the material is what is interesting, rather than the effects. The cast mostly work well, with Duttine solid in the lead with Relph doing OK work alongside him and Colbourne a strong presence with a character that asks a lot of moral questions of the viewer.

Overall then, better and more faithful to the book than the film version. It looks dated and of course the effects are not brilliant but it is the complexity of a crumbling society and the choices to be made that keep it interesting more than the action of Triffid attacks.

When I was seven years old, Day of the Triffids scared me so much that my parents sent me to bed early, and banned me from watching later episodes. With a lifetime of memories of a few images, I was stunned to find the show rerun on British satellite telly, and nervous about watching it again.

As so many have commented here, the joy of DOTD is its concentration on the breakdown of society. With humanity rendered blind, there are some nasty images here: a starving woman struggling to open a box, unable to see that it's washing powder; another woman struggling to get into a tin of coffee; a crowd of blind people surrounding a car, desperate to grab hold of the sighted people inside it. Nasty, unsettling, realistic stuff.

The Triffids are kept to a minimum, and wisely so, as their appearance is a bit early-80s-BBC. They look a bit plastic. Careful camerawork highlighting their roots, shadows, lethal stinging "tongues"; and the eerie Triffid soundeffect, are supremely effective in keeping the horror of death by walking vegetable on the edge of screen throughout. With horrendous disease sweeping the land, a dictatorial self-imposed government planning to seize control, the breakdown of modern society is uncomfortably close. The first meeting of the group Bill meets up with, explaining that "women will be expected to have babies, men will be expected to work", could be real.

A few scary Triffid moments, and a lot of very believable "what if" issues ensure that DOTD is as special now as it was when I was sent to bed early, and woke with nightmares, all those years ago.

I remember watching this when i was a child and still enjoy it as much now as i did then,the breakdown of morals were shown very quickly with the main character trying to save a girl from being raped and it made me think what would happen if there was no more law and order and the sighted could do whatever they wished.OK the triffids are very 1980's (but that is when it was made so what do you expect) But if they made a remake now it would be all CGI and no story (war of the worlds being a major case).All in all i would have to say get it (not the rubbish film but the bbc version) settle down on a Sunday afternoon and go back in time to when a programme had to keep you hooked by the story line and not the special effects and maybe make you worried about your garden at night lol.

I remember watching this on TV when I was little and being terrified of the triffids. I watched a lot of sci-fi but this stood out. I've always liked those survival stories like dawn of the dead or 28 days later. If you like those kind of movies you'll probably enjoy day of the triffids. When I saw it was now available on DVD I ordered it with plenty of enthusiasm and a little trepidation. Often those shows you watch and enjoy as a kid just don't hold up and watching them as an adult kind of takes the shine off those memories. I mean, how good do those special effects in Doctor Who look now. But, in this case I need not have worried. I've just watched all six episodes of Day of the Triffids in a row and I loved it. Yes, the special effects do look a little dated but all things considered, they're not that bad, and they don't interfere with your enjoyment. The story is great, well written and well paced, you never know what's going to happen next. Plus it throws up lots of little ethical questions. Also, the acting by all of the main cast is excellent. Forget about the old movie version, read the book or watch this mini series. 8/10.