Before watching this it is best to put the book and previous adaptations out of your mind or you will be frustrated by the inconsistencies. Even if you have never heard of The Day of the Triffids before there will be several times during the programme where it will hard to suspend disbelief; for example I don't think it is possible to survive a plane crashing into a city by hiding in the toilet with a few life vests.
Set in the not to distant future the problems of global warming has been solved by replacing fossil fuels with oil extracted from triffids, a strange plant discovered in central Africa which not only feeds on meat but is able to move on its own. They are farmed in secure buildings where the males are segregated to prevent uncontrolled pollination. All is going well until too things occur, first one of the farms is infiltrated by a man determined to free the triffids during his capture triffid expert Bill Mason is wounded and has to go to hospital for eye surgery. While he is recovering the second event occurs; a solar flare that causes blindness in everybody who observes it. When Bill wakes up and takes off his bandages he finds that he is one of the few people that can still see, others include reporter Jo Playton who was in the Underground when the flare occurred and Torrence, the man on the plane who was sleeping at the time.
With most people blind and the escaped Triffids advancing on London Bill and Jo plan to head out of the city to Bill's father's house in the country where they think they may be able to use some of his research to find a way to combat the triffids. Unfortunately they are prevented from doing this by Torrence who, along with American Major Coker, has some how taken control of London.
The actors did a good enough job with the material and I thought using the triffids as a solution to global warming was a decent updating but wasn't so keen on other things such as when Torrence acquired a pistol from a policeman; there was no explanation as to why an ordinary policeman would be armed a later on when Bill and Jo meet a couple of young armed girls there is no explanation as to how they got their hands on a submachine gun of a type which hasn't been used by the military in twenty years. Despite these flaws I enjoyed this version of the story well enough.
Set in the not to distant future the problems of global warming has been solved by replacing fossil fuels with oil extracted from triffids, a strange plant discovered in central Africa which not only feeds on meat but is able to move on its own. They are farmed in secure buildings where the males are segregated to prevent uncontrolled pollination. All is going well until too things occur, first one of the farms is infiltrated by a man determined to free the triffids during his capture triffid expert Bill Mason is wounded and has to go to hospital for eye surgery. While he is recovering the second event occurs; a solar flare that causes blindness in everybody who observes it. When Bill wakes up and takes off his bandages he finds that he is one of the few people that can still see, others include reporter Jo Playton who was in the Underground when the flare occurred and Torrence, the man on the plane who was sleeping at the time.
With most people blind and the escaped Triffids advancing on London Bill and Jo plan to head out of the city to Bill's father's house in the country where they think they may be able to use some of his research to find a way to combat the triffids. Unfortunately they are prevented from doing this by Torrence who, along with American Major Coker, has some how taken control of London.
The actors did a good enough job with the material and I thought using the triffids as a solution to global warming was a decent updating but wasn't so keen on other things such as when Torrence acquired a pistol from a policeman; there was no explanation as to why an ordinary policeman would be armed a later on when Bill and Jo meet a couple of young armed girls there is no explanation as to how they got their hands on a submachine gun of a type which hasn't been used by the military in twenty years. Despite these flaws I enjoyed this version of the story well enough.