The three part mini series is not exactly an adaptation. They treated the source material fairly freely, but that is not necessary a bad thing. Clarke wrote his novel in the middle of Cold War (1958), so there was a divided world - there was Communist World and Democratic World. I remember reading it around the time I read Orwell's 1984, when I was in my mid-teens. Both books are horrific depictions, painting a bleak image of humanity. But somehow, after stripping Childhood's End of any "signs of time" and leaving the bare story, it appears clear how abysmally depressing it really is.
