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List Price: $24.98 | | Label: BBC Warner
Salesrank: 30387
Released: November 6, 2007 |
| Our Price: $18.46 |
| Used Price: $14.87 |
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MPAA Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
All humans eat vegetables. But what if we were the helpless ones, and the plants were eating us? Following the Earth's close encounter with a comet, a meteor shower strikes Britain's population blind. Bill Masen, recovering in a London hospital from a vicious plant attack, is one of only a few people to survive with his eyesight intact. But the world he emerges to has altered terrifyingly into a nightmare where man-eating plants -- the triffids -- are gathering in force!
Description of The Day of the Triffids:
If the notion of being pursued across the countryside by monstrous, ambulatory stalks of rhubarb strikes terror into your soul, then this British TV adaptation of sci-fi novelist John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids will be right up your hedgerow. If not, well, perhaps its more campy elements will carry the day. As adapted (and significantly abridged) by Douglas Livingstone and directed by Ken Hannam, the story is serialized in six parts, each about 25 minutes long. In the first, we meet protagonist Bill Masen (John Duttine), who knows all about the rhubarb… um, the triffids… having spent some time working among the folks who harvest their valuable oil extracts. Seems these strange plant thingies, whose origin is most mysterious, can not only walk (albeit at a pace that makes The Lord of the Rings trilogy's Ents seem like Olympic sprinters) but kill, subduing victims with their whip-like stingers and then consuming the rotting flesh; indeed, one of the triffids almost nailed our hero, which is why he's hospitalized when we first see him. Next thing you know, some kind of toxic celestial event has lit up the skies and blinded everyone who dared look at it, leaving most of the population sightless and stumbling about the streets of London (and everywhere else); only those who missed the calamitous light show, including Bill and soon-to-be love interest Jo (Emma Relph), can still see, while the triffids, who multiply in frightening numbers, proceed to lay waste to everyone else. There are some interesting ideas developed along the way, including the inevitable breakdown of civilization as the survivors struggle to begin anew while dealing with the implacable triffids. But the execution of said ideas is lacking; shot on video, the show has a flat, rather cheesy look, along with low-rent special effects (the triffids are laughable), less than stellar acting, and dialogue straight out of a soap opera. In the end, the fact that this Day of the Triffids is considered better than the 1962 film adaptation with Howard Keel is probably its principal attraction. --Sam Graham
The Day of the Triffids Reviews:
Not With A Bang, But A Triffid... 
2009-09-28 - Wednesday May 12th 1982: Agriculturalist, Bill Masen, awakens in a London hospital to discover that he has miraculously missed the end of the world. Unbeknownst to Bill, whose eyes have been swathed in bandages for ten days following some emergency ocular surgery, the majority of the population of the planet has been blinded following a unique cosmic event. Staggering through the streets of an eerily silent London trying to make sense of it all, Bill begins to become very nervous indeed when he realizes that the balance of power between man and Triffid - large, genetically engineered, carnivorous, mobile plants farmed en masse for their high grade oil and possessed of poisonous whip-like stings - has been changed irrevocably and in the days that follow, Bill will realize just how fragile man's dominance of the planet really was...
In direct opposition to the awful sixties big screen version starring Howard Keel, The BBC's six part adaptation of John Wyndham's classic dystopian sci-fi novel, "Day Of The Triffids" is as faithful an adaptation of a literary classic as you're ever likely to see. Originally broadcast in the fall of 1981, it made an indelible impression on my burgeoning young mind and remains a bleak, brutal television classic nearly thirty years later. An obvious influence on Danny Boyle's "28 Days Later", Douglas Livingstone's script manages to retain all the intelligence, bleakness, humanity and humour of Wyndham's novel whilst contemporizing the setting and Ken Hannam's evocative direction favours the 'less is more' approach - a wise move considering the budgetary constraints he was clearly working against (this was a television series shot on video tape, with filmed inserts, by the BBC in 1981, after all). The title sequence, featuring a montage of green-lit faces gazing up at the heavens and being assailed by Triffid whips to the accompaniment of Christopher Gunning's ominous choral arrangements, remains one of the most memorably sinister to ever grace a television program.
John Duttine (later the star of the offbeat BBC sitcom, "Lame Ducks") delivers an excellent performance as an everyman thrust into an unthinkable situation and is ably supported by Emma Relph's reluctant heroine and Maurice Colbourne's ambiguously ruthless anti-hero; though it has to be said, the real stars of the the piece are the Triffids themselves which, though they may look rather clunky in these days of slick CGI, are realized using some nicely squishy plant props and an ominous sound design (the sound of the monstrous vegetables rattling their leg-like stumps against their knotty boles has haunted me for some twenty eight years).
Recently watching the entire three hour series in it's entirety again with my partner, who hadn't even been conceived when it was originally broadcast, we were both struck by how well it stands up as a piece of drama today. In her own words, "it's better than most of the shows on TV today". High praise indeed and a judgment I wholeheartedly endorse.
If you like what you see here, I also recommend that you check out the original 1975 incarnation of the post-apocalyptic plague drama, "Survivors"(although don't bother with the sanitised, PC remake as its terrible), as well as the spooky sci-fi murder mystery, "The Nightmare Man", and that classic of hydrophobic paranoia, "The Mad Death", which were all made by the BBC, back in the days when the television licence fee was actually spent on worthwhile programming.
Faithful adaptaion of novel 
2009-09-08 - This DVD may seem a little dated but it is a very faithful adaptation of John Wyndham's novel. I think is very well done and would love to see them do one of The Kraken Wakes (Out of the Deeps).
An atmospheric adaptation of Wyndham's classic tale
2009-07-07 - Like many Americans, I first saw this miniseries when it was broadcast on PBS in the 1980s. When it came out on DVD, I knew I had to get a copy of it for my collection. This is a superb adaptation of John Wyndham's classic novel, one that updated the setting while retaining the essentials of the book. Though not a big-budget adaptation, it succeeds brilliantly in creating a powerful atmosphere through excellent acting, a haunting score, and stark images of the virtually empty streets of London. There is no sense of coziness in this catastrophe, just fear followed by the collapse of civilization and the grim struggle for survival that follows. All of it makes for compelling viewing, entertainment well worth the price of the DVD.
Great remake
2009-06-07 - Few remakes ever really enjoy the original's status, but this remake was actually as good as or better than the original movie The Day of the Triffids.
It's just ok 
2009-05-31 - Normally I like British TV but this show was lacking something. It was worth watching only for the hilarious triffids. It's amusing enough for 2 stars. Long triffid tongues are scary. Watch
the 60's version for a good laugh.
