THE MIDWICH CUCKOOS
LOST CHILDREN
SKY’S NEW VERSION OF THE MIDWICH CUCKOOS ISN’T THE FIRST ATTEMPT AT TELEVISING THE CLASSIC JOHN WYNDHAM BOOK. WE LOOK AT A 2001 PITCH WHICH FAILED TO HATCH
WORDS: IAN BERRIMAN
© D-KEINE/GETTY
AFTER TWO MOVIE VERSIONS, THE Midwich Cuckoos, John Wyndham’s 1957 novel about a village where every woman of childbearing age becomes pregnant after a mysterious “Dayout”, was recently adapted for television. But lead writer David Farr wasn’t the first to have a crack at it.
Two decades ago Stephen Gallagher, the man behind ’80s Doctor Who’s “Warriors’ Gate” and “Terminus” and ITV drama Eleventh Hour, was enlisted to help with development on various Wyndham properties by rightsholder Mark Samuelson (now an executive producer on the 2022 version).
“Mark asked me to do a breakdown of what I thought the TV potential was in a lot of the Wyndham material,” Gallagher tells SFX. “I remember saying that one of the problems with adapting The Kraken Wakes is that people are going to be expecting a kraken and expecting it to wake, and neither of those are in the book!”
He wasn’t the only writer involved. Stephen Volk, who scripted Ghostwatch and created ITV’s Afterlife, completed a second-draft screenplay for The Chrysalids. Gallagher, meanwhile, was tasked with cracking The Midwich Cuckoos – and found himself facing a conundrum. On the one hand, he felt there was no point doing a period piece. “[1960 movie] Village Of The Damned had done that so well. You’d be putting yourself up against that for comparison – a no-win situation.”
On the other hand, he saw a fundamental problem with modernisation. “Because we live in different times, the situation is different,” the writer explains. “The notion of a small army unit and a country copper being able to seal off a village in the middle of England and nobody raising an eyebrow just doesn’t play.” As he put it in his pitch document, “These kids would all be signed up to the tabloids… Tourists would flock to the village and buy ‘Little Angel’ tea-towels.‘”