I can't honestly say I remember or had even heard of this 70's children's television series. So going into it I really didn't know what to expect. It seems to have sustained a good reputation from British kids who remember seeing it back in the day and I guess I can understand why, as it is a distinctive bit of television. Despite being aimed at children, it does have some slightly dark and serious themes running through it which suggests to me that maybe 70's children were treated with less kid gloves than they are nowadays. The story revolves around a mysterious event which creates a psychosis in the British population which manifests itself in an intense hatred of machinery. The cities are emptied as people flee to the country or overseas. A teenage girl gets separated from her parents in the chaos and is forced to go it alone.Having watched this ten parter, my feelings are overall a bit mixed if I am totally honest. While on the one hand, I do have to give the programme credit for introducing a somewhat unusual and ambiguous story to children with interesting themes such as racism, misogyny and ecological concerns, on the other hand it was a bit clunky in actual execution quite a lot of the time. The original set-up was somewhat hurried, with the girl being separated from her parents in a poorly thought out manner with the father figure deciding it would be easier to go to France and then travel back to find his daughter who was clearly still in the general vicinity! While at the other extremity, the ending involving Merlin's stone was, to put it mildly, a bit underwhelming, with the totally unnecessary daftness of an aeroplane being heard in the sky overheard no more than five minute after the stone decides to reverse its malevolent force because the heroine asked it to be more reasonable. In between it still has leaden sections too, with some under par acting not helping massively. But it is a TV production aimed at kids so you do need to cut it some slack and it was pretty progressive to have a group of Sikh characters enter the narrative in a major way, as even today ethnic groups aren't always very well represented on television. I also really enjoyed the witch-hunter story thread which I thought was handled well, with some good suspense levels. And overall, the sheer enigmatic quality to much of it was a welcome thing, even if the mystery was, as I said earlier, not exactly resolved terribly well. Overall, this is still a definite interesting curiosity and something worth seeking out for those with an interest in TV science fiction in particular.

I clearly remember this programme, as though it were yesterday; I was thirteen at the time of first broadcast. Despite the fact that the programme was the usual dystopic(god, why does this website not understand the word dystopic - IT IS A VALID WORD!!!) Sci- Fi of the time, and seemed to be highly derivative of a film from the previous year, called No Blade of Grass, right down to the presence of Asian characters (generalised Asian characters in No Blade of Grass, Seikhs in The Changes) and a catastrophe situation (dying plants in No Blade of Grass, hatred of technology in The Changes), I liked the programme, largely because at thirteen, I fancied about half the women on TV (don't we all at that age?) and Vicky Williams was one of them, along with Gillian Blake (Follyfoot), Hilary Dwyer (Hadleigh), and Helga Anders ( The White Horses) which brings me to the main point of writing this. Does any body, apart from me, remember that The Changes was first show in 1973, when I was thirteen and all these other programmes were on the TV? The programme ran, at the very least, in th BBC Midland region; I remember discussing the programme with school friends, and since I changed schools at the end of 1973, and therefore subsequently had new friends, I CLEARLY remember the event of the time, and know that I am right in this. Final Point. If I find it this difficult to put a review on IMDb again, I will deal with the production company direct - IMDb are NOT the definitive authority; this is obvious from my review.

I remember this from the 70's. I only saw the middle episodes but still had vivid memories of it years later. UK Gold recently screened the whole series and I finally learned what had happened. They don't make children's drama like this anymore, pity. One other thing I noticed, when a threat was dealt with, it was over. These days unless you see the bad guy die you just know he will be back to plague the hero's due to a lack of imagination by the scriptwriters. This series however fell into three subplots which followed on from each other as we followed Nicky through the often Violen and very menacing Changes caused by the Stone.

I saw this show in the late 70s on the ABC, I was only about 8 or 9 at the time. I remember vividly the scene where everyone goes wild and smashed up everything (notably cars), the comparative kindness of the Indian family compared with the stupid rednecks who seemed to dot the countryside and the big rock at the end. The Changes was very much a product of the environmental push that took place in the 70s. I would be curious to see how the show would be presented today. This show was one of many fine British television dramas for children from the 70s.