It was probably inevitable that John Wyndham’s 1951 classic cozy catastrophe The Day of the Triffids would make it to an 80s British TV screen. Indeed, whilst this was the first time The Day of the Triffids had been adapted for the British Television Screen, this was not The Day of the Triffids first British adaption (radio: 1953, 1957, 1968) or it’s first screen adaption (America’s The Outer Limits in 1964 and for the Big Screen in 1963). Shown in a Thursday school-night slot at an 8.30 pm, The Day of the Triffids was aimed at a more mature audience than Doctor Who – the then big beast of British TV scifi. And this shows; at times corpses litter the ground and the heroes, trapped by their own limited resources, often leave those weaker and more disabled than themselves to perish at the stingers of those walking monsters known as the Triffids.

Originally written in the early days of the Cold War, it’s tale of destructive lights in the sky followed by societal collapse and eventual national occupation by a merciless foreign force would have seemed worrying familiar to a viewer in early 80s Cold War Britain as it would have done to those who had just survived the Second World War.

Adapted by Douglas Livingstone and produced and broadcast by the BBC, The Day of the Triffids occupied six 30 minute slots in the third quarter of 1981 and has been repeated periodically ever since.

On To Episode One.