The Day Of The Triffids - The Complete BBC Series [DVD]

If you've read the book, you must avoid this hopelessly inferior re-boot. It's clumsy in the extreme and is full of unnecessary re-writes.

However, if you've no real knowledge of the story, or don't fancy the book, this is a decent enough TV drama BASED on the book with a "modern" twist to the outstanding 1950s story. Reading the reviews here, it's hard to disagree with those appalled by the way Wyndham's vision has been warped with a US TV audience in mind. The final scenes in particular are laughable.

But getting there is actually quite an enjoyable ride. Unlike some others, I thought Eddie Izzard did a good job as Torrance, who's role is given much greater prominence than in the book. His unpleasant character has a quietly sociopathic, detached demeanour which Izzard does justice to, albeit without any real menace. I have no idea why he had to survive a plane crash in order to be introduced. Part of me wonders if the crash was simply a strand of the eco-frenzy agenda behind this version of the story. But it's ridiculous to suggest he could away from a central London plane crash by locking himself in the toilet and surrounding himself with inflated life jackets. The plane careers into Big Ben on its way down. Izzard emerges, blackened and frazzled, looking like he's survived a cartoon blast.

Other random thoughts:

Vanessa Redgrave and Brian Cox are criminally under-used but both are superb.

The CGI is passable (not outstanding but then this has TV budgetbut the triffids are certainly not the plants that Wyndham envisaged. Here, the roots are essentially tentacles that drag the victim toward the carnivorous beast to be quickly devoured. A perfectly neat idea but in the book the triffids killed with a sting to the eye then spent several days feasting on the rotting flesh of the victim. Obviously the TV execs didn't fancy something that plodding so "sexed up" the plants.

There are some very good scenes. The one in the food warehouse springs to mind. The one where Joely Richardson battles triffids after her escape from Downing Street (!!) is another good one. Her overall performance is less noteworthy.

Basically, to enjoy this mindless adaptation, you have to open your head, remove your brain and insert a bucket of popcorn in its place. Suspend disbelief - all of it - and enjoy the apocolyptic ride, ignoring the glaring plot holes. Better still, get hold of the BBC series from the early 80s and revel in how a drama series SHOULD be made. You may wince at the effects but there is more tension in one 25 minute episode of that version than in three hours of this one.

I was so disappointed by this, although I had tried to warn myself not to get my hopes up.

The principal sin commmitted by this latest version of Wyndam's classic tale is that it is not in any way plausible. Plausibility is the one thing that made the original book so compelling - indeed, I would argue that its essential plausibility is what has elevated it to the status of classic literature. It's about an ordinary man forced to deal with extraordinary circumstances. It's a love story and a story of survival - there are no heroes trying to save the world, no insane bad guys trying to take the world over.

In this new adaptation, all this is sacrificed in order to make a pathetic travesty of a Hollywood disaster movie for the small screen. The main protagonist's central objective (to survive, to find his soul-mate, to make a family) is replaced with the wearisome mission to SAVE THE WORLD, and because of this a host of tedious antagonists are thrown in his way, for example an adversarial father figure (a familiar staple in so many US story-lines), an insane nun with a personal retinue of meat-head bodyguards, and a big bad baddie in the shape of Eddie Izzard. The world's population do not witness an amazing comet then go to bed only to wake up blind the next morning, but all get dazzled enmasse in a split second, leading to instant pandemonium and panic. Even the top half of Big Ben falls off in sympathy.

As well as the plausibility issues (for example, Izzard's character sets up base in London, at 10 Downing Street no less, whereas in the book Wyndam is careful to ensure the action shifts away from the capital as soon as possible, due to the fact that the city turns into an open sewer in a matter of days), there is simply no tension or atmosphere. Consider the opening - the book starts with a man with bandages over his eyes waking up in a hospital bed and trying to work out why the hell no-one has come to unbandage him. It's a wonderfully creepy opening and as he finally works out what is going on, so do we the reader. The 1980's TV adaptation did this brilliantly, devoting most of the first episode to having John Duttine alone in a hospital room, scared out of his wits).

In this new version however everything is done relentlessly in the third person - we the audience see the disaster happening first, then just watch the main character reacting to it. The first act is rushed, botched, lacking thrills.

Then the plot goes completely off the rails and gets polluted by all kinds of grafted on garbage, all seemingly designed to cater for an imaginary audience of utter morons who need plane crashes, meglomaniacal psychopaths, turbulent father-son conflicts and, at the end, far-fetched twists involving black magic in order to not switch channels.

To all this add the fact that pretty much all the actors turn in dreadful performances and you really do have a recipe for disaster. Whoever concocted this dire travesty should be ashamed of themselves, and this DVD should be studiously boycotted by anyone with even a modicum of respect for John Wyndham.

Considering John Wyndham's novel is regarded as such a classic it's surprising that this new TV adaptation is only the third time it has been filmed, the previous one, also made by the BBC in 1981 was superlative, while before that all we had was a shoddy american b-movie that's best forgotton. Long overdue for a glossy new one then, with today's top-notch effects bringing Wyndham's book to frightening, riveting life? Er, sadly no. This new version is absolutely dreadful, bearing very little resemblance to Wyndham's brilliant book, ditching the haunting imagery, thought-provoking scenarios, excellent characters and riveting plot developments in favour of a flashy, all style no substance action-heavy sci fi drama with overbearing music, wooden acting and stupid CGI monsters with ever growing tentacles. It's like a particularly bad episode of the new Doctor Who (yes, as bad as that!). Dougray Scott is as wooden as a sideboard, there is no chemistry between any of the characters, Eddie Izzard hams it up, there's far too much flash-bang-wollop effects and shooting guns and little thoughtful, reflective science fiction (which was the whole point of Wyndham's novel). In fact, aside from the Triffids and the notion of the majority of the world going blind, this film bears very little resemblance to the book at all.
A complete waste of 3 hours of your life, as well as possiby one of the worst and least faithful adaptations of a magnificent book I've ever seen. John Wyndham must be spinning in his grave. Avoid this and watch the BBC's masterful 1981 version, which is truly faithful to the book and a cracking piece of science fiction drama. This stinks!