Threads (1984 film)

The Sheffield Royal Infirmary, site of the hospital scene.

Young Sheffield residents Ruth Beckett (Karen Meagher) and Jimmy Kemp (Reece Dinsdale) intend to marry due to her unplanned pregnancy. Meanwhile, as hostilities between the United States and the Soviet Union escalate, the Home Office directs Sheffield City Council to assemble an emergency operations team, which settles in a makeshift bomb shelter beneath the town hall. After a brief nuclear skirmish between the Americans and the Soviets in Iran, the people of Britain fly into a panic, resulting in riots and looting. "Subversives" (mainly consisting of peace activists and trade unionists) are arrested under the Emergency Powers Act. At 8:30am in Britain, Attack Warning Red is transmitted as a nuclear warhead air bursts over the North Sea, then another at nearby RAF Finningley. In the ensuing chaos, Jimmy disappears as he tries to find Ruth. Strategic targets, including steel and chemical factories in the Midlands, are also attacked, destroying two-thirds of all British homes and immediately killing 12 to 30 million people. The nuclear fallout prevents the remaining functioning civil authorities from fighting fires or rescuing those trapped under debris. Sheffield's emergency team is trapped under the destroyed town hall, and rescue is impossible due to the high levels of radioactivity and destruction of all surrounding roads. A few hours later, fallout descends upon Sheffield, fatally contaminating Jimmy's family. Searching for Jimmy, Ruth goes to the Sheffield Royal Infirmary, where she realizes there is no longer electricity, running water or medicine.

Curbar Edge, Peak District, where the scenes set six weeks after the attack take place.

A month after the attack, soldiers enter the ruins of the town hall, where they find the emergency staff have suffocated. Without the manpower or fuel to bury or burn the dead, an epidemic of communicable diseases spreads. The government authorizes capital punishment, and special courts execute criminals. The only viable currency becomes food, given as a reward for work or withheld as punishment. The millions of tons of soot, smoke and dust in the upper atmosphere trigger a nuclear winter, lowering temperatures and preventing crop growth. Ruth flees to the Buxton countryside, where she gives birth to a daughter. A year after the war, sunlight begins to return, but crop cultivation remains poor due to the lack of equipment, fertilizers, and fuel. Damage to the ozone layer intensifies ultraviolet radiation, causing an increase in cataracts and cancer. Military and civil authorities dissolve in the face of depleted resources.

A decade later, Britain's population has dropped to medieval levels of about 4 to 11 million people. Survivors work in the fields with primitive tools, and children born after the war are intellectually underdeveloped and speak a stunted form of English. Prematurely aged and blind with cataracts, Ruth dies in bed, survived by her 10-year-old daughter Jane. Sometime later, industry returns with limited electricity and steam powered technology, but the population continues to live in barbaric squalor. Three years after Ruth's death, Jane and two boys are caught stealing food. One of the boys is killed, and Jane and the other boy engage in a struggle for the food that degenerates into "crude intercourse".[4] Months later, Jane gives birth in a makeshift hospital, and she screams at the sight of her stillborn child.

• Paul Vaughan as the Narrator
• Karen Meagher as Ruth Beckett
• Reece Dinsdale as Jimmy Kemp
• David Brierley as Mr Bill Kemp
• Rita May as Mrs Rita Kemp
• Nicholas Lane as Michael Kemp
• Jane Hazlegrove as Alison Kemp
• Phil Rose as Doctor Talbot
• Henry Moxon as Mr Beckett
• June Broughton as Mrs Beckett
• Sylvia Stoker as Granny Beckett
• Harry Beety as Clive J. Sutton (Controller)
• Ruth Holden as Marjorie Sutton
• Ashley Barker as Bob
• Michael O'Hagan as Chief Superintendent Hirst
• Phil Askham as Mr Stothard
• Anna Seymour as Mrs Stothard
• Fiona Rook as Carol Stothard
• Steve Halliwell as Information Officer
• Joe Holmes as Mr Langley
• Victoria O'Keefe as Jane
• Lesley Judd as TV newsreader
• Lee Daley as Spike
• Marcus Lund as Gaz
• Ian Parkinson & Tony Grant as Radio Announcers

Threads was first commissioned (under the working title Beyond Armageddon) by the Director-General of the BBC Alasdair Milne, after he watched the 1965 drama-documentary The War Game, which had not been shown on the BBC when it was made, due to pressure from the Wilson government, although it had had a limited release in cinemas.[6] Mick Jackson was hired to direct the film, as he had previously worked in the area of nuclear apocalypse in 1982, producing the BBC Q.E.D. documentary A Guide to Armageddon.[7][8] This was considered a breakthrough at the time, considering the previous banning of The War Game, which BBC staff believed would have resulted in mass suicides if aired. Jackson subsequently travelled around the UK and the US, consulting leading scientists, psychologists, doctors, defence specialists and strategic experts in order to create the most realistic depiction of nuclear war possible for his next film.[9] Jackson consulted various sources in his research, including the 1983 Science article Nuclear Winter: Global Consequences of Multiple Nuclear Explosions, penned by Carl Sagan and James B. Pollack. Details of a possible attack scenario and the extent of the damage were derived from Doomsday, Britain after Nuclear Attack (1983), while the ineffective post-war plans of the UK government came from Duncan Campbell's 1982 exposé War Plan UK.[10] In portraying the psychological damage suffered by survivors, Jackson took inspiration from the behaviour of the Hibakusha[6] and Magnus Clarke's 1982 book Nuclear Destruction of Britain.[10] Sheffield was chosen as the main location partly because of its "nuclear-free zone" policy that made the council sympathetic to the local filming[5] and partly because it seemed likely that the USSR would strike an industrial city in the centre of the country.[11]

Jackson hired Barry Hines to write the script because of his political awareness. The relationship between the two was strained on several occasions, as Hines spent much of his time on set, and apparently disliked Jackson on account of his middle class upbringing.[9] They also disagreed about Paul Vaughan's narration, which Hines felt was detrimental to the drama.[12] As part of their research, the two spent a week at the Home Office training centre for "official survivors" in Easingwold which, according to Hines, showed just "how disorganised [post-war reconstruction] would be."[13]

Auditions were advertised in The Star,[14] and took place in the ballroom of Sheffield City Hall, where 1,100 candidates turned up.[13] Extras were chosen on the basis of height and age, and were all told to look "miserable" and to wear ragged clothes; the majority were CND supporters.[12] The makeup for extras playing third-degree-burn victims consisted of Rice Krispies and tomato ketchup.[14] The scenes taking place six weeks after the attack were shot at Curbar Edge in the Peak District National Park; because weather conditions were considered too fine to pass off as a nuclear winter, stage snow had to be spread around the rocks and heather, and cameramen installed light filters on their equipment to block out the sunlight.[13] Although Jackson initially considered casting actors from Granada Television's Coronation Street, he later decided to take a neorealist approach, and opted to cast relatively unknown actors in order to heighten the film's impact through the use of characters the audience could relate to.[9]

In order for the horror of Threads to work, Jackson made an effort to leave some things unseen: "to let images and emotion happen in people’s minds, or rather in the extensions of their imaginations."[12] He later recalled that while BBC productions would usually be followed by phone calls of congratulations from friends or colleagues immediately after airing, no such calls came after the first screening of Threads. Jackson later "realised...that people had just sat there thinking about it, in many cases not sleeping or being able to talk." He stated that he had it on good authority that Ronald Reagan watched the film when it aired in the US.[9] Along with Hines, Jackson also received a letter of praise from Labour leader Neil Kinnock, stating "the dangers of complacency are much greater than any risks of knowledge."[12][15]

Threads was a co-production of the BBC, Nine Network and Western-World Television, Inc. It was first broadcast on BBC Two on 23 September 1984 at 9:30 pm, and achieved the highest ratings on the channel (6.9 million) of the week.[5] It was repeated on BBC One on 1 August 1985 as part of a week of programmes marking the fortieth anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which also saw the first television screening of The War Game (which had been deemed too disturbing for television in the 20 years since it had been made). Threads was not shown again on British screens until the digital channel BBC Four broadcast it in October 2003.[17] It was also shown on UKTV Documentary in September 2004 and was repeated in April 2005.[18]

Threads was broadcast in the United States on cable network Superstation TBS on 13 January 1985,[19] with Ted Turner presenting the introduction.[20] This was followed by a panel discussion on nuclear war. It was also shown in syndication to local commercial stations and, later, on many PBS stations. In Canada, Threads was broadcast on Citytv in Toronto, CKVU in Vancouver[21] and CKND in Winnipeg,[22] while in Australia it was shown on the Nine Network on 19 June 1985.[23] Unusually for a commercial network, it broadcast the film without commercial breaks;[24] many commercial outlets in the United States and Canada that broadcast the film also did so without commercial interruption, or interrupting only for disclaimers or promos. In January 2018, journalist Julie McDowall led a distributed viewing of the film, encouraging the audience to share their reactions on Twitter under the hashtag #threaddread, as part of a campaign to ask the BBC to show the movie for the first time since 2003.[12]

Threads was originally released by BBC Video (on VHS and, for a very short period, Betamax) in 1987 in the United Kingdom. The play was re-released on both VHS and DVD in 2000 on the Revelation label, followed by a new DVD edition in 2005. Due to licensing difficulties the 1987 release replaced Chuck Berry's recording of his song "Johnny B. Goode" with an alternative recording of the song. In all these cases, the original music over the opening narration was removed, again due to licensing problems; this was an extract from the Alpine Symphony by Richard Strauss, performed by the Dresden State Opera Orchestra, conducted by Rudolf Kempe (HMV ASD 3173).

On 13 February 2018, Threads was released by Severin Films on Blu-ray in the United States. The programme was scanned in 2K from a broadcast print for this release, including extras such as an audio commentary with Director Mick Jackson and interviews with actress Karen Meagher, Director Of Photography Andrew Dunn, Production Designer Christopher Robilliard and film writer Stephen Thrower.[25][26] This is also the first home video release in which the extract from the Alpine Symphony remains intact.

On 9 April 2018, Simply Media released a Special Edition DVD in the UK, featuring a different 2K scan, restored and remastered from the original BBC 16mm CRI prints, which Severin did not have access to. This also featured the original music, for the first time on home video in the UK. Whereas the previous releases had no extra features, the Special Edition included commentaries and associated documentaries.

The film was nominated for seven BAFTA awards in 1985. It won for Best Single Drama, Best Design, Best Film Cameraman and Best Film Editor. Its other nominations were for Best Costume Design, Best Make-Up, and Best Film Sound.[37]

• Able Archer 83, NATO command post exercise that resulted in the 1983 nuclear war scare and changed thinking about nuclear war in Britain.
• List of nuclear holocaust fiction
• Nuclear weapons in popular culture
• Nuclear weapons and the United Kingdom
• Operation Square Leg, a military analysis of the effects of a nuclear war on Britain.
• Protect and Survive, the 1970s British government information films on nuclear war.
• 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.
• Testament, a 1983 film about a nuclear explosion over the United States

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