I’ve suddenly just become able to feel semicolons

I was prepared for some naff and badly dated drama in The Day of the Triffids on BBC 4 last night. Instead it was threatening and frightening without anything actually happening – something that TV producers will not sanction these days. I read one review that said it had too much artificial explanation to develop the story which in the first episode was obviously directed at the tape player that Bill Masen was using to dictate the story of the Triffids for his colleague’s book. This will always be a problem with adapting John Wyndham’s books as he explains the background to the action in great detail; to stick to the story as this drama did, some sort of deep research type material is required just to keep the reader or viewer up with the plot.