Day of the Triffids

THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS is a 1980s adaptation of the classic novel by John Wyndham. The story has most of the inhabitants of the UK blinded by a meteor shower, although our hero, Bill Masen, was in hospital with his eyes wrapped in bandages at the time, and so escaped the blindness. At the same time, a strange planet known as a Triffid, has been developed, which is a giant plant which is able to pull itself up from its roots and move around. It has a deadly sting, and as people have been blinded, the Triffids are able to kill humans whenever they want. This leads to an absolute breakdown in society, and the story follows Masen as he (and the ...

If there's one series crying to be released from the BBC archives then it's their early-80s adaptation of The Day of the Triffids. This scared me to death when it was first broadcast and having watched it again a few months back, care of a very ropey video copy, I can confirm that it is one of the great small-screen sci-fi series (from the days before such things were labelled 'cult' and steered away from the audience at large). A palpable sense of isolation and terror are created in a post-apocalyptic England where the surviving blinded populace are slowly picked off one by one by the marauding plants. Yes, the Triffids themselves are walking ...

The Day Of The Triffids - a wonderful story by John Wyndham made into a film for the big screen has also been shown on TV. The Triffid, a plant originally bred for it's oil, became a curiosity as a carniverous plant. It was held captive in secure compounds as it had aquired the ability to move from place to place, albeit slowly. It had a long lash with a lethal sting on the end with which it attacked it's prey, soon to be man and beast. The Triffid wasn't fussy what meat it absorbed. The captive plants had their sting removed but not their seeds and unknown to the people the seeds had spread far and wide. A brilliant and prolonged meteor ...