Sky One Orders ‘The Midwich Cuckoos’ Adaptation From ‘The Night Manager’s David Farr

Sky One Orders ‘The Midwich Cuckoos’ Adaptation From ‘The Night Manager’s David Farr

Sky One has ordered an adaptation of John Wyndham’s classic science fiction novel ‘The Midwich Cuckoos‘ written and created by ‘The Night Manager’ and ‘Hanna’ scribe David Farr. The eight-part series updates the novel to the present day and relocates it to a commuter town in the south of England forty miles outside London.

Midwich is a sleepy commuter town in contemporary southern England, and a great place to bring up children. One September evening a part of the town falls suddenly falls unconscious. Humans, animals, all pass out on their feet; without warning, without reason. For twelve hours no one can get into the Blackout Zone. No phones work, satellite cameras can’t see in, and what is happening inside is a total mystery. Then suddenly everything returns to normal. But not quite. For something truly inexplicable has happened…

Every woman of child-bearing age has fallen pregnant. The spawn of these pregnancies are “The Midwich Cuckoos”, a group of chillingly unusual “children”. They will change this community forever, dividing loyalties, threatening lives both within the town and beyond and requiring a terrifying sacrifice in order to prevent them from causing a catastrophe.

Based on the novel by John Wyndham, the series is adapted for the screen by David Farr (‘The Night Manager’, ‘Hanna’), with Alice Troughton (‘Baghdad Central’, ‘Cucumber’, ‘A Discovery of Witches’) as lead director. The series is written by David Farr, Namsi Khan, Laura Lomas and Sasha Hails. Produced by Route24 (which is backed by ITV studios) and SnowedIn Productions in association with Sky Studios, executive producers are Marc Samuelson and Robert Cheek for Route 24 and Ruth Kenley-Letts and Neil Blair for Snowed-In Productions.

‘The Midwich Cuckoos’ has been adapted twice before on film as ‘Village of the Damned’, the first being from Wolf Rilla in 1960, and a second time by legendary horror director John Carpenter in 1995. There have also been various radio adaptions and audiobooks over the years. Wyndham’s other most famous novel, ‘The Day of the Triffids’, has also been adapted multiple times for tv, film and radio.

‘The Midwich Cuckoos‘ will premiere on Sky One and NOW TV in 2022.