'Enormous value is placed these days on having a child. 'In this story the adults are the innocents with a trusting nature, and the children are not,' says David Farr. They've arrived in Midwich with intent, and it may be malicious. Keeley Hawes (pictured) stars in the show as Dr Susannah Zellaby who realises that something sinister is going on It soon becomes clear there's a special connection between these youngsters, whose clothes mirror the blue-grey and yellow colouring of the cuckoo – the bird that lays its eggs in other birds' nests. But they seem to grow up fast, their minds showing a frightening ability to control others, and as time goes on their parents start to fear them. The series follows the births of these mysterious children, who are initially adored by their parents. Soon, just as suddenly, power is restored and all is back to normal bar one thing: every female of child-bearing age has inexplicably become pregnant. Then there appears to be a power cut, and everyone in town falls unconscious. Much of the seven-part series was filmed in Amersham, Buckinghamshire.Īs it begins, psychiatrist Dr Susannah Zellaby (Keeley Hawes) is about to get the train to London to go on a date, leaving her troubled 23- year-old daughter Cassie (Synnove Karlsen) alone for the evening, while local police chief DCI Paul Haynes (Max Beesley) is hoping to finish work to get home to his pregnant wife. Here the story has been brought into the modern day, with Midwich an affluent commuter town voted 'the sixth best place in Britain to bring up children'. Wyndham conceived Midwich as a peaceful fictional village in his original novel, which has twice been made into films called Village Of The Damned, to reinforce the malevolence of the threat. That's a brilliant intellectual idea.'īritish author Wyndham is most famous for his 1951 novel The Day Of The Triffids, another chilling tale of extraterrestrial horror descending on Middle England which was most recently adapted for TV in 2009 with Brian Cox, Joely Richardson and Dougray Scott. 'The central premise of the story is that the thing you most love could turn on you and kill you. 'Even though it's set in a post-war town it made me, in 1980s Surrey, feel it could be my community infected with a malignant force. 'From the moment I read the book when I was 12 I became a John Wyndham obsessive,' says the show's writer David Farr, whose adaptation of The Night Manager in 2016 was critically acclaimed. The Midwich Cuckoos is based on John Wyndham's acclaimed 1957 novel, which follows the births of mysterious children, who are initially adored by their parents until they start controlling other peoples' minds
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