An adaptation by Douglas Livingstone of the 1951 novel by John Wyndham, the six half-hour episodes were produced by David Maloney and directed by Ken Hannam, with original music by Christopher Gunning.

In late 20th century Britain, a spectacular meteor shower unexpectedly renders most of humanity blind, leading to the collapse of society overnight.

Bill rescues Josella "Jo" Playton (Emma Relph) from her blind captor and finds that she had slept through the meteorite shower thus kept her sight.

They eventually come across a small band of similarly sighted survivors who have decided to leave London and establish a community elsewhere to begin rebuilding civilisation.

The group had split after a disagreement over morality: the ones who stayed behind, led by Miss Durrant (Perlita Neilson), refused to accept that polygamy would be necessary to repopulate the world.

Miss Durrant's group had been wiped out by the disease but the other faction had secured the Isle of Wight and exterminated the local triffid population.

Before they can leave, several uniformed men arrive in an armoured car the next day; they are part of an organisation that is setting up a feudal society, with the sighted as the new aristocracy.

The gnarled bole, based on the ginseng root, was made of latex with a covering of sawdust and string while the neck was fibreglass and continued down to the floor, where it joined with the operator's seat.

[2] Copies of the props later were fellow guests at a cocktail party with Angus Deayton during an episode of Alexei Sayle's Stuff (see "External Links" below).

As with the same year's classic The Nightmare Man (BBC), it represents serious and unsentimental science fiction with John Duttine, in particular, excelling as the battling and bewildered protagonist, struggling to survive in a blind, brutal world.