THE MIDWICH CUCKOOS – created by David Farr – (limited spoilers) ⁓

This is the third film adaptation of John Wyndham’s novel and it’s a good one. The screenplay is intricate and subtle, and is interpreted vividly by three directors: Alice Troughton, Jennifer Perrott, and Börkur Sigþórsson.

On Friday 6 May (possibly in the year 2020) the following sequence of events occurs over a 24 hour period in the fictional English village of Midwich.

Zoë Moran (Aisling Loftus) and Sam Clyde (Ukweli Roach) are on their way to the village, having just bought a house there. Sam is a history teacher and is fascinated by the forest around them. “What’s really interesting,” he explains, “is that there were Celtic tribes that used to make this exact journey thousands of years ago for ritual and trading purposes.” Zoë finds this less than interesting. Her reason for relocating is that Midwich has been named one of the ten best places in Britain to raise a child. The song Rolling, by Michael Kiwanuka is heard in the background as they drive.

In Midwich itself, child psychologist Dr. Susannah Zellaby (Keeley Hawes) is in session with young Charlotte McLean (Darcie Smith) and her mother Sarah (Amy Cudden). Charlotte has nine stuffed animals. She names them as follows:

• Katherine Kangaroo
• Dottie (a dalmation)
• Pablo the Penguin
• Miriam the Magic Girl
• Lazy Mary
• Eunice the Unicorn
• Miss Smilla
• Sadie Spider
• Brian the Lion

Charlotte can’t sleep unless all her plushies are lined up in exactly that order, or “bad things will happen”. Susannah suggests that, since Charlotte is spending the weekend out of town with her mother and grandmother, she should leave one of the animals behind. “I promise to do my very best to make sure nothing bad will happen,” says Susannah. ‘Brian the Lion’ remains behind.

Susannah’s daughter Cassie (Synnove Karlsen) is watching a TV documentary about tigers. The narrator says tigers have been around for almost eleven million years. “Under this canopy,” he says, referring to the surrounding jungle, “we can get to the roots of the cat family tree”. The show follows one tiger as she “learns all the skills she’ll need to know to become the perfect predator.”

Susannah goes to London to meet someone she found through a dating service.

Sam and Zoë pick up keys from estate agent Mary Ann Phillips (Rebekah Staton), who cautions them: “When you walk through your front door, go in backwards. It’s Midwich good luck.” Zoë does that. Sam doesn’t. It is shortly after 3pm.

“…as the story goes, Zeus was planning on having sex with Hera when he noticed that she was separated from the other gods. Because he did not want to be obvious and did not want to be seen by her, he changed his appearance into a cuckoo and was waiting on a mountain which was first called Thornax but is now just called Cuckoo.”
— Scholion on Theokritos, Idylls 15.64

At the request of her boss, Jane Coulter (Marianne Oldham) agrees to take “night duty” at the nearby prep school. She must fetch her dog Tilly from home.

Rachel Saunders (Hannah Tointon) speculates about her new neighbours across the street (Sam and Zoë) with her husband Curtis (Lewis Reeves). Later, because Zoë and Sam have not yet installed curtains, Rachel watches from her upstairs window as they make love. Rachel and Curtis have a son named David (Dexter Sol Ansell) who will become important to the story in later episodes.

DCI Paul Haynes (Max Beesley) is informed about erratic electrical phenomena in the area. Because of this, he is forced to work late and remain out of town.

Jodi Black (Laura Rossi) drives into town to visit her pregnant sister Deborah Haynes (Jade Harrison), wife of the Detective Chief Inspector. The train she took partway was delayed an hour for unspecified reasons. On the drive from the train station, a malfunctioning traffic light causes her to nearly collide with a couple trying to cross the road.

Susannah enters the train station at 19:37. At the same time, Amrita Chohhan (Anneika Rose) arrives, and is picked up by her lover Stuart McLean (Mark Dexter) in his black Range Rover. Stuart is in the midst of a political campaign, and Amrita is one of his campaign workers. They are having an affair, and are spending the weekend together at his place in Midwich because his wife Sarah and daughter Charlotte are out of town visiting Sarah’s mother.

Norah Randall (India Amarteifio) works at the stables where the horses have been unquiet all afternoon. After work, she goes to a party at the school. When she arrives there, the music playing is Frontline by Pa Salieu.

The sun sets. The horses escape. Cassie becomes uncomfortable being in the same room with ‘Brian the Lion’ and walks outside. At the local prep school, Jane Coulter finds a student named George (Kit Rakusen) reading “The Magician’s Nephew” under the covers instead of sleeping as he is supposed to be. It is 8pm. Later, Coulter finds George standing in the hallway with a blank look on his face. A column of lightning strikes the ground in front of the school, and everyone suddenly and simultaneously falls asleep, as do the horses. The flame on the gas stove in Deborah’s house goes out, not all at once, but starting at the left side of it. All the windows and doors of the house are closed. The time is 21:47.

“The attribute for which the cuckoos are best known is the habit of brood parasitism, found in all of the Cuculinae and three species of Phaenicophaeinae. It consists of laying the eggs singly in the nests of certain other bird species to be incubated by the foster parents, who rear the young cuckoo.”
— Brittanica

In London, Dr. Zellaby searches for something to discuss with her date: “I have kids as young as six coming to me dreaming of terrible violence,” she tells him. “Men attacking them with knives. Buildings falling. There’s a wave of anxiety crippling our young. We’re not doing enough about it.” She declines an offer to spend the night in London, and heads for the train station, but a blackout in Midwich has delayed the trains, so she hires a car instead. Outside Midwich, she encounters a roadblock, and is ncouraged to turn around and head back to Warham. Instead, she walks through the woods toward town on foot. When she encounters the edge of the affected area, she also falls asleep.

The incident ends twelve hours after it began, and everyone wakes, apparently unharmed, with the exception of DCI Haynes’ pregnant wife Deborah who is found dead on her kitchen floor. Gas fumes might be responsible for that, but her sister Jodi, who fell asleep on the floor of the next room, survives.

The unborn children seem to exercise control over the women’s bodies, preventing them from aborting the pregnancies, and from leaving town. All the women give birth to healthy children on the same day seven months later. The babies all weigh exactly the same, and contain only the DNA of the mothers. No paternal DNA is detectable. The children grow at an accelerated rate, are highly intelligent, and communicate with one another telepathically. The Home Office is aware of a similar incident in Nordosk, a town in the Soviet Union, in 1973, but communicates that to no one. Not even DCI Haynes.

And that’s just the first three episodes.

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Miscellaneous Info

Susannah is told to drive back to Warham when she runs into a roadblock on her way home, and Midwich is said to be located in Buckinghamshire at another point in the show. The Buckinghamshire location is further supported by the train announcements, which suggest the train station is near Wendover.

The series is based on the novel by John Wyndham. Margaret Atwood talked about the novel in an article for Slate Magazine: “In my opinion, Wyndham’s chef d’oeuvre is The Midwich Cuckoos; it was published in 1957, just as I was 17 and going off to university, so it was a good time for me to be thinking about the consequences of being impregnated by an alien while unconscious, then giving birth to an alien species that ruins your life. The Midwich Cuckoos was certainly a graphic metaphor for the fear of unwanted pregnancies as experienced by the teenage girls of that pre–birth-control era. I myself had a dream about a highly intelligent nonhuman baby after reading this book, although the infant was green; so Wyndham must have been connecting strongly with the collective unconscious.”

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THE MIDWICH CUCKOOS can be streamed on AMC+ and AcornTV,
and is available on DVD.

* Last Updated 6 months ago