Cathardincu Surprisingly incoherent and boring

ChampDavSlim The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Tobias Burrows It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Kimball Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

nwestwood1 When I was a child in 1984 I think I saw the first rerun of this adaptation and I was terrified. When I brought the DVD a few years ago my perspective changed dramatically. All it is are a bunch of BBC darlings not acting very well and running away from Garden centre props who sound like Skippy The Kangaroo. I also find it amusing that it was filmed mainly in trendy parts of North London. Hampstead, Belsize Park, Primrose Hill and Camden Lock. Cleary the majority of actors and producers lived round that neck of the woods. Hey it' s good budget reductions. If you're from that part of London you will know what I mean! But hey 80s nostalgia is 90% of the time a mistake when it is rewatched in the noughties.

jamesbloke I remember watching this BBC version of "The Day of the Triffids" when it was first shown (1981?). It has stuck in my mind ever since as being a really great series. I didn't remember that many details (except the final scenes where the survivors drive through the fence and out of their triffid-proof enclosure to new life somewhere else), only that I really enjoyed it. Then two or three years ago I saw it at the National Film Theatre in London and it all came flooding back! Now I am watching the DVD.I have only listened to an abridged audio book so I can't comment on the faithfulness of the adaptation, but I can say that the characterisation is good, the acting (especially John Duttine) is excellent and the special effects are good enough to serve their purpose. Remake? Noooooooooo!

Unicorn-9 I had vivid memories of watching this show as a teenager when it was first shown on TV, and recently bought the DVD. It's not badly done, but at the same time I found it far less effective today than I did then. Surprisingly, the triffid effects didn't look too bad. OK, they're obviously fake plants, but they're about as convincing as could be expected on a BBC budget.I think the main problem is that they tried to cram too much into a relatively short series, so the character development isn't terribly convincing. As some others have pointed out, a number of scenes are basically pure exposition with characters expounding their beliefs without much dramatic impact, characters meet and fall in love in a few minutes, and the whole 'should we help the blind or not?' issue is really skimmed over with people making up their minds very quickly: I know it would make rational sense to let most of the blind die rather than try to keep them alive, but I doubt that most people would write them off as quickly as the characters here do. Another issue watching it in the 21st century is that there are a few very 1970s haircuts that rather give away the age of the show :).So it's worth a look, and it's a far better adaption of the book than the film from the 1960s, but there's still room for a better one!

konky2000 I remember catching this once on latenight PBS in either 1991 or 1990. I was totally engrossed by the story at the time and ever since I have been trying to find it on video so that I could see it again. Unfortunately, it has proved to be a very difficult video to find, as it doesn't appear to have been released commercially in the US. After many years of looking, though, I managed to find a version of the film that someone had made off of the TV.When I watched it again, I was joined by two other people who were not familiar with the Triffids story. We all agreed that the story was very compelling, and it reminded us a lot of '28 Days Later,' though much less thrilling.What remains compelling is the depiction of humans struggling to figure out how best to organize themselves in a post-apocalyptic world. Since the show is 3 hours long, it is also able to fully develop themes that a 2 hour movie is not able to show.Yet, overall, I was a little disappointed. One of my main complaints is that much of the story is told expository dialogue between characters. Too often, 'conversations' are nothing more than extended debates between characters about how best to cope with living in a post-apocalyptic world. In addition, character development is a little clumsy and sudden for such a long film. Characters seem capable of falling in love too quickly and friends and enemies seem to form much quicker than seems natural. And the overall problem that the Triffids themselves are not very threatening never really gets dealt with. They walk too slowly and can't break glass, so in general are a little too easily dealt with by the protagonists.Still, this version is FAR better than the Hollywood movie version made in the 60's, and I am very glad I have finally had the chance to watch it again. It is definately worth tracking down if it is something you remember watching in the past.