MICHAEL HERBERT talks about THE CHANGES

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on January 12th 2025.

Way back in 1974, children’s television legend ANNA HOME, as part of her commitment to producing challenging and interesting drama serials intended for older children, wrote an adaptation of a trilogy of books written by PETER DICKINSON (The Weathermonger, Hartsease, and The Devil’s Children) which turned out to be one of those TV serials that somehow, with its powerful images of a country descending into chaos, managed to sear itself into the minds of a generation.

Produced for the BBC, and broadcast in 1975 across ten episodes that were each just shy of half an hour in length, and mostly filmed on locations across the south west of England, THE CHANGES took the basic stories told in those three books, turned them on their heads, made one character the centre of each, and made a compelling drama that found many schoolchildren dashing home to watch the next episode, and involving themselves in fascinated conversations about it in the playground the next day.

Or maybe that was just me and my mates. Who knows?

Nevertheless, opening with scenes of wanton destruction of all sorts of vehicles, domestic equipment, and entertainment devices, as humanity both young and old was influenced into destroying all the mechanical objects that were taking over our lives, and destroying our planet, the series in many ways resembles other post-apocalyptic dramas as Britain swiftly reverts to a feudal society full of mistrust, fear of outsiders, and superstition.

NICKI GORE, played by then nineteen-year old VICTORIA WILLIAMS, and later on, her friend JONATHON, played by KEITH ASHTON, embark on a quest to find the source of these apocalyptic CHANGES and try to restore humanity back towards its way to civilisation. On their way NIKKI is helped by members of the SIKH COMMUNITY in a very progressive take on the outsider for seventies TV, and hindered by the kind of sinister personalities that always seem to rise to the top when civilisation collapses.

And whilst some of the stories may resemble a kind of SURVIVORS-LITE for the children’s hour, and some of the storylines do, perhaps, stretch your credulity when watching them as an adult, much of what they have to say tells us of the types of prejudices and problems that lie just beneath the surface of 1970s Britain, many of which still feel rather familiar today.

This series with its many very forward thinking images seared itself into our imaginations, and TV historian MICHAEL HERBERT - who is very much a fan of television science-fiction - returns to VISION ON SOUND today to discuss the series with me.

PLEASE NOTE - For Copyright reasons, musical content sometimes has to be removed for the podcast edition. All the spoken word content remains (mostly) as it was in the broadcast version. Hopefully this won't spoil your enjoyment of the show.