Threads (1984 film)
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
|
Related e |
|
Featured: |
Threads is a British television drama produced jointly by the BBC, Western World Television and the Nine Network in 1984. Written by Barry Hines and directed by Mick Jackson, it is a documentary-style account of a nuclear war and its effects on the city of Sheffield in northern England.
The primary plot centres on two families, the Kemps and the Becketts, as an international crisis between the United States and the Soviet Union erupts and escalates. As the United Kingdom prepares for war, the members of each family deal with their own personal crises. Meanwhile, a secondary plot centered upon the Chief Executive of Sheffield City Council serves to illustrate the British government's then-current continuity of government arrangements. As open warfare between NATO and the USSR-led Warsaw Pact begins, the harrowing details of the characters' struggle to survive the attacks is dramatically depicted. The balance of the story details the fate of each family as the characters face the medical, economic, social, and environmental consequences of a nuclear war.
Shot at a budget of £250,000-350,000, the film was notable in being the first of its kind to depict a nuclear winter. Certain reviewers have nominated Threads as the "film which comes closest to representing the full horror of nuclear war and its aftermath, as well as the catastrophic impact that the event would have on human culture". It has been compared to The Day After, a 1983 U.S. television film depicting a similar scenario in the United States. (One review of both productions said, "Threads makes The Day After look like A Day at the Races.")
See also
- List of nuclear holocaust fiction
- Nuclear weapons and the United Kingdom
- Nuclear weapons in popular culture
- Protect and Survive, the 1970s British government information films on nuclear war.
- Testament, a 1983 American film which tells the story of how one small suburban town near the San Francisco Bay Area slowly falls apart after a nuclear war destroys outside civilization.
- When the Wind Blows, a 1986 animated British film that shows a nuclear attack on Britain by the Soviet Union from the viewpoint of a retired couple.
- The Day After, a 1983 American made-for-TV film dealing which tells a similar story from the point of view of several communities in the Midwestern United States.
- Able Archer 83, NATO command post exercise that resulted in the 1983 nuclear war scare and changed thinking about nuclear war in Britain.
