BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

GazerRise Fantastic!

Abbigail Bush what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Ava-Grace Willis Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Theo Robertson THE CHANGES is one of these shows you watch as a child and you can remember elements all the way in to adulthood . I saw the first episode in January 1976 knowing nothing about and was disturbed as the characters quickly set about destroying any appliance that could vaguely be described as a machine . It quickly had me tuning in to every episode for ten weeks and the only show that had an effect on me at the time was DOCTOR WHO . I In short it's a show you don't forget in a hurry and one that in a world of videotape and VHS video you want to track down . Unfortunately once you do see it 30 years after its broadcast you might be rather disappointed The first episode " The Noise " was just as I remember and is somewhat chilling as buildings collapse and psychotic crowds take to the streets to destroy machinery . The effect is somewhat diluted somewhat when you realise much of the footage is taken from the 1967 Hammer version of QUATERMASS AND THE PIT . Simiraly the impact is lessened when the psychotic crowds seem to be very liberal in working out what qualifies as " modern man made machinery " . You can understand someone smashing up televisions but is a bike getting beaten to death by a lynch mob is possibly a bit silly but writer Anna Home and director John Prowse rightly just concentrate on informing the audience a terrible event is occurring without going in to detail Unfortunately both the writer and director throw a massive spanner in the works where Mrs Gore states that they" Must escape to France where I've heard things are still normal " Since the televisions and radios have been destroyed in a mass cull , and telephones too probably how would she know this ? The audience are also left scratching their heads a few minutes later when the Gores embark on their journey to France only to have the noise happen again leading to more machine mashing . Mr and Mrs Gore notice that Nicky has disappeared only to have Mr Gore state that he'll take his wife to France then he'll come back to England to find his daughter ! Nicky can't be more than a few hundred yards away but her parents will go to France then Mr Gore will go back to find her . T. I know this is a plot turn to set up Nicky being separated from her parents but when you're making a plot turn it's imperative to structure it so that it doesn't seem illogical . In fact throughout the whole episode the time frame and story structure hold together rather badly , so much so you'll swear that this fondly remembered piece of television from childhood has been heavily edited such is the disjointed nature That said the story does pick up somewhat in the second episode though be it the story does seem somewhat slow in places . Nicky is given sanctuary in the second episode by a group of Sikhs . Halfway through the series Nicky and the Sikhs part ways as the protagonist goes and searches for her Aunt in the countryside and it as Nicky is accused of being a witch by a contemporary Matthew Hopkins who insists that Nicky be stoned to death . This is a very effective subplot and shows that you don't have to be graphic in order to chill an audience . Both the writing and performances tell the story without the need of cruelty .If you think it's somewhat lame in 2010 please remember it's a children's show from the mid 1970s Despite the effectiveness of this segment where THE CHANGES falls down is in the denouncement which is every bit as clumsy and confusing as the opening episode . Nicky and Jonathon ( Who saved her from the Witch Finder ) go in to a cave and meet the cause of the noise that brought about the changes - a megalith . Apparently Mr Megalith has been annoyed at humanity so has tried to destroy civilization in Britain . He's able to read Nicky's mind and seeing what she has seen he decides he's been unjust so effectively destroys himself as Nicky and Jonathon make good their escape . It's confusing too since the two protagonists hear an airliner passing over head as they exit the cave . If a plane is flying over the sky does this mean that the changes never happened in the first place ? If not it's contradicted by Nicky mentioning her parents are still in France In all honesty watching THE CHANGES again with an interval of over 30 years I was slightly disappointed . The main narrative is involving enough though the story is let down by both the opening and concluding episode . Someone like Russell T Davies can get away with writing a poor DOCTOR WHO episode by concentrating on an opening hook and emotional ending where as Anna Home's 10 episode saga seems to be the antithesis of this type of writing . That said if it compelled you to tune in every week as a child then that can only be viewed as a success and if you can remember it more than 30 years later then that's an even bigger success . It's also a children's show that would never be produced nowadays . Instead we'd get " soap opera lite " for teenagers so perhaps we should praise THE CHANGES flaws and all

simonferdinand I remember watching this series when I was 6 years old, and I found it absolutely terrifying. After the first episode, as soon as the title page appeared I begged my mum to change channel because I really thought the TV was going to explode, or everyone outside in the street was really going to freak out and smash up everything while it was showing. At that age I just couldn't take this sort of programme. I had nightmares about "the noise" and school lock-outs, power blackouts and people rioting in the streets for years after. Actually it was almost an omen for late 70's Britain in many ways.I couldn't remember the name of the series, until one day just idly surfing the net I happened to search for: "disturbing BBC1 children's series 1970s" to see if a well-known search engine could help me find it, and here it was.I don't know what made BBC programmers think this apocalyptic stuff was suitable viewing for kids: young teens maybe, after Top Of The Pops or something similar, but I was still at the Paddington Bear level.But I must admit I'd quite like to see it again now that I'm 38!

michael-stead I remember seeing this as a child, and I believe it may even have been repeated soon afterwards. It was quite hard-hitting bleak stuff for the children's slot, and very welcome because of that. David Garfield as a hard-bitten leader in the post-industrial dystopia gave a memorable performance. In fact in the years since it was last shown (an before IMDb or other internet sites made it easy to dig up these old shows) the only thing I had to convince myself that the show really existed (in the face of blank stares from my contemporaries) was David's performance. The title of the show was certainly unmemorable.I imagine that at the time this was seen as a junior version of Terry Nation's 'Survivors', and was in the same mould as 'Ace of Wands', as a slightly unsettling half an hour of entertainment. This was in an age when every schoolchild grew up believing that at any minute the Russians and Americans would set off nuclear Armageddon, and so in some ways it was also rather like one of the Public Information Films of the time. I think that in these days of shouty Blue Peter presenters and the thunderingly moronic "Dic 'n Dom" it would be utterly out of place on CBBC.As we 'know' everyone was bewilderingly racist in the 1970s . . . except that millions of children were introduced to Sikhism through 'The Changes'. The only people unaffected by the destruction of society were the rather noble band of Sikhs.I suppose what was rather alarming about 'The Changes' would have been the juxtaposition with 'The Wombles'. In the latter a broken television set was the prompt for Tobermory to turn it into a new camera or automatic hot water bottle for Great Uncle Bulgaria. In the former it would be left discarded at the side of a wind-swept wasteland as the rest of society crumbled around it.The end of the series was rather haunting, as the children who were the heroes found their way to a cave deep under a mountain in wales, where a huge pulsing white rocky crystal was sending out the waves of hate which had perverted the world.So far BBC worldwide seem not to have considered this for release as a DVD. Perhaps the special effects would seem a bit dated today, but I am sure that as a piece of quality drama it would have lasted quite well.

Glenn Walsh I remember this from my childhood and like the first reviewer I was totally captivated. It dealt with some terrific ideas, but I always remember the opening credits where the girl's father smashed the TV with one of those ashtrays-on-a-stand. To me, a 10-year-old telly addict, that was horrifying! I read the book it was based on, 'The Weathermonger' and it was much better, with a developed story and a more plausible ending. WEE SPOILER... In the book, the supernatural force was revealed to be Merlin the wizard, no less. A re-make of this with a bigger budget (maybe even a feature) could be very successful today as we are even more techno-dependent than we were in 1975. Any producers reading this...