The Midwich Cuckoos stars talk ramping up the novel's chills, and the challenges of an ensemble-based mystery
John Wyndham's iconic sci-fi novel The Midwich Cuckoos gets reframed for modern-day audiences in a new series starring Max Beesley and Keeley Hawes, ditching its male lead in favour of a more ensemble-based mystery instead.
"There's always a worry that because you're separated from each other that you might be playing your scenes in a style that doesn't seem like you're in the same show as everybody else," laughs Hawes, as she discusses the character-driven show with Total Film. "But Alice Troughton, our director, managed all that very well and kept us all in the same world. I mean, we don't know what's going on in the room next door. I don't know what's happening with my family at the moment, so there's something quite truthful to it, too. And even though we'd read the scripts, we hadn't seen it, so it was a treat to finally see it all play out."
Based on the 1957 book, which previously served as the blueprint for Wolf Rilla's acclaimed film Village of the Damned (1960), the seven-parter follows Dr. Susannah Zellaby (Hawes), her daughter Cassie, and several of their neighbors. One random evening, the residents of the titular Midwich all pass out, and any out-of-towners who rock up suffer the same fate, too. After a nerve-racking few hours, the blackout inexplicably lifts, however, and everyone gains consciousness again – but, in a deeply unnerving twist, all the women of childbearing age soon discover that they are pregnant.
Some expectant mothers are frightened by the news, all too aware that it didn't happen naturally, while Aisling Loftus's character Zoë Moran, who has been trying to have a baby with her husband Sam (Ukweli Roach), is elated. Accelerated pregnancies lead to a bunch of simultaneous births, before it
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