John Wyndham is one of the greats of British science fiction, the author of beloved classics The Day of the Triffids (1951) (filmed in 1962, adapted for television in 1981 and 2009 and for radio countless times), The Kraken Wakes (1953), The Chrysalids (1955), The Midwich Cuckoos (1957) (filmed twice as Village of the Damned, in 1960 and 1995 with an unofficial Thai version,  Kawao Thi Bang Phleng in 1994; a British television version is due in 2022), The Outward Urge (1959), and Trouble with Lichen (1960). The last major work published in his lifetime (he died in March 1969 aged 65) was Chocky, originally published as a novelette in the March 1963 issue of Amazing Stories and expanded into novel form a few years later.

The BBC adapted it for radio twice, first as a single hour-long episode in 1968 and again in a more substantial series of seven 15-minute episodes in 1975 and it reached television in 1984 thanks to veteran producers Vic Hughes and Pamela Lonsdale at the London ITV franchise holder Thames Television. The script, by Anthony Read is relatively faithful to the book, with the change of the setting from a near-future to a contemporary Britain and the removal of any doubt as to whether or not the eponymous alien visitor was just a figment of the young protagonist’s imagination being the most obvious changes.

David (James Hazeldine) and Mary Gore (Carol Drinkwater) become concerned about the sudden change in the behaviour of their 12-year-old son Matthew (Andrew Ellams). He’s begun to have very intense conversations with an imaginary friend, a being he decides is female and named Chocky (a nice voice performance from Glynis Brooks). He becomes increasingly withdrawn and depressed but also shows increased artistic and mathematical abilities. A trip to a psychologist, recommended by the family doctor, Landis (Jeremy “Boba Fett” Bulloch) and a hypnosis session reveals that Chocky is in fact real, a disembodied alien explorer who has befriended Matthew hoping to learn more about the human race (Matthew is described by his adopted parents as “foundling” which might explain Chocky’s attraction to him). Chocky helps Matthew rescue his younger sister Polly (Zoe hart) after a boating accident and the resulting press frenzy brings him and Chocky to the attention of the authorities…

Chocky is the unmistakable product of a much older age, a gentle and thoughtful story that doesn’t rely on special effects (which is just as well as a British television budget of the day means that they’re not up to much) and instead relies heavily on ideas. It probably wouldn’t sit well with modern viewers who might well be surprised by just how talky much of it is. The story is located firmly in the sort of middle-class English world where much of Wyndham’s work is set, and which was still the default location for British television at the time. The only major surprise here is that it took so long to make it to the small screen – like so much of Wyndham’s work it seemed a natural for the British television landscape of the time, one that had barely changed for a couple of decades.

But those looking for a more cerebral, if decidedly low-key, bit of suburban science fiction will be adequately rewarded with a satisfyingly eerie, well-acted and nicely paced adaptation that should even please all but the most protective fans of the original novel. There are moments here that will strike chords with any parent watching along with the younger target audience, the scripts giving voice to those concerns that all parents feel about their kids being too different or not fitting in. Matthew appears to be mentally ill at first and there’s a real sadness running through the six half-hour episodes (Ellams is very affecting) as he tries to come to an understanding of the changes that he’s going through, metaphors for the changes all children have to put up with as they develop. He’s lonely, tormented and even sometimes even in physical pain because of his contact with Chocky but the friendship is a mutually beneficial one – he’s a better person for their friendship, but in the end he’s going to have to let her go and inevitably, it’s going to hurt.

Wyndham’s aliens were never ones for huge displays of power or technology – there were no city-smashing motherships hovering over the world’s capitals for him. In The Midwich Cuckoos, the “invasion” literally takes years as the eponymous alien younglings are raised by human host families that are barely aware of their real parentage; in The Day of the Triffids, the plants (their origins remain obscure but they’re certainly “alien” to Earth’s ecosystem) are equally in no mad rush to get the job done, waiting with literally inhuman patience for their moment to strike; and here the aliens make themselves known through an unlikely but very real friendship between one of their explorers and a lonely young boy, a benign sort of first contact, more Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) or E.T. the Extra-terrestrial (1982) than The War of the Worlds (1952) or Independence Day (1996).

Chocky was just the sort of thing you’d expect from behind the scenes talent with the wealth of experience brought to bear here. Lonsdale was a veteran of British television, producing since the mid-1960s with shows like The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1967), Ace of Wands (1970-1972), pre-school classic Rainbow (1972-1992), the very spooky Shadows (1975-1978), Stig of the Dump (1981), Dramarama: Spooky (1983) and many, many others to her name. Hughes (who also directed three episodes of Chocky with Christopher Hodson tackling the rest) worked on several of those much-loved titles as well as The Tomorrow People (1973-1979), Roberts Robots (1973-1974) and The Feathered Serpent (1976-1978); and Read was a veteran of Doctor Who (1963-1989) (he wrote The Invasion of Time (1978) with producer Graham Williams using the joint pseudonym David Agnew, and the less-than-spectacular The Horns of Nimon (1979)), The Omega Factor (1979), Hammer House of Horror (1980) and Sapphire & Steel (1979-1982) among many others. With that level of talent on board, it’s no surprise that Chocky turned out to be such a beautifully written, nicely produced (given the limitations of British television production at the time) and above all memorable series, still much-loved today.

The Wyndham estate was so impressed by the adaptation, hailing it the best of the author’s they’d seen so far, that they gave the go-ahead to a pair of sequel series, neither directly based on Wyndham – Chocky’s Children (1985) and Chocky’s Challenge (1986), the latter made without Lonsdale or Hughes – and in 2008 it was announced that Steven Spielberg was working on a new adaptation for his Amblin Productions (given that the success of E.T. is likely the reason why the TV adaptation of Chocky was greenlit in the first place, that seems appropriate). Nothing has come of that to date.