The Midwich Cuckoos: Now a major Sky series starring Keeley Hawes and Max Beesley

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Life gets less ordinary still when the inhabitants wake up 12 hours later and find that every woman of childbearing age is pregnant. There is a lot of placing of hands on bellies and gazing in wonderment up at the sky as expressions of incredulous delight creep slowly across faces, instead of a more plausible mass panic. This is when you know you are in for eight hours of traditional fare rather than any dizzying innovation, and so it proves. The nature of self and individuality (and how it is affected by mind control and shared consciousness)

We are presented with a moral dilemma of some niceness. On the one hand, it is our duty to our race and culture to liquidate the Children, for it is clear that if we do not we shall, at best, be completely dominated by them, and their culture, whatever it may turn out to be, will extinguish ours." (S.208) radio production - An adaptation by William Ingram in three 30-minute episodes for the BBC World Service, first broadcast between 9 and 23 December 1982. It was directed by Gordon House, with music by Roger Limb of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. It is regularly repeated on BBC Radio 4 Extra. An easy read, at first glance, with dated language and characters. But there is more to it than meets the eye.The first mysterious occurrence is what people in Midwich refer to as the "Dayout," - within a certain invisible boundary surrounding Midwich, all living beings - humans, cows, birds, et al.- slump to the ground unconscious for a considerable time and thereafter regain consciousness with no apparent ill effects. Al nacer estos niños son aparentemente normales(a excepción de un tono dorado en sus ojos). A medida que van creciendo se adelantan en su desarrollo y comienzan a presentar habilidades telepáticas y de control mental que representan "una amenaza". The first three quarters was fairly interesting but staid and ponderous and not at all frightening but the last quarter became quasi-philosophical, pseudo-political, sort of intellectual and quite frankly duller than a broken doorknob. The ending was also rather sudden and quite frankly insultingly expected.

Un tranquilo pueblo británico, Midwich, sufre un extraño evento .Todos sus habitantes se desvanecen y sufren un periodo de inconsciencia. Terminado este periodo recuperan la conciencia sin efectos aparentes. Sin Embargo a los meses los habitantes descubren que todas las mujeres del pueblo en edad fértil están embarazadas. Sex-swapping the Zellaby character hardly makes up for it. To lean in to a Handmaid’s Tale vibe or use the production to examine some other dystopian vision wouldn’t dishonour the book; there’s plenty shifting about beneath Wyndham’s superficially “acceptable” story that could justify much darker takes than the “cosy catastrophist” ( as Wyndham was dismissed by Brian Aldiss) is now known for. As it is, we are left with no more than an adequately told, already known story dragged out for at least two hours longer than necessary while using about 10% of the talent its actors have to offer. Damn. Den Film aus dem Jahr 1960 und das Remake von 1995 habe ich beide schon mehr gesehen - es handelt sich um durchaus sehenswerte Verfilmungen. Deshalb recherchierte ich vor einiger Zeit, wer eigentlich die Vorlage schrieb und stieß somit auf den mir (und das als großer Science Fiction Fan!) namentlich komplett unbekannten John Wyndham. We have both been given the same wish to survive, We are all, you see, toys of the life-force. It made you numerically stronger, but mentally undeveloped. It made us mentally strong but physically weak: now it has set us at one another, to see what will happen. A cruel sport perhaps, from both our points of view, but a very very old one. Cruelty is as old as life itself. There is some improvement: humour and compassion are the most important of human inventions; but they are not very firmly established yet, though promising well. But the life-force is a lot stronger than they are; and it won't be denied its blood-sports."

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The children get born and then we are in the Village of the Damned (in case anyone missed the connection). Good story and a few cool twists that kept interest up. Unfortunately it fell apart a bit for me at the (inevitable) end, when Wyndham uses the entire storyline as a basis for a existential/ethical discussion that felt very contrived.