Threads

Threads is an extraordinarily bleak docu-drama film about a nuclear attack on Sheffield, England and the aftermath, starting shortly before the attack and continuing to 13 years after, as the threads that hold civilisation together slowly unravel. Like The War Game, which dealt with similar subject matter, the film mixes conventional narrative with text screens and narration.

During filming, the BBC reportedly got into trouble with the local police after detonating a large smoke bomb to simulate a mushroom cloud. Many residents believed there had been a real explosion.

The film follows two families and charts a steady and unremitting generational decay. In one of the most poignant scenes, a group of ragged survivors shambles past an undamaged poster depicting a happy, smiling baby. At the end of the film, the brain-damaged daughter of one of the bomb survivors becomes pregnant; in the final scene we see the look of horror on her face when she sees what she has given birth to....

Written by Barry Hines and directed by Mick Jackson, it was released in 1984. It was aired once on the BBC in 1985 (I believe there was at least one repeat screening, although I'd apreciate confirmation) and was not been seen on British screens until digital channel BBC Four broadcast it in November 2003. It has also been broadcast in the USA. It has been released on video cassette and DVD.

The film critic Steve Rose has said that "Threads was to The Day After what Coronation Street was to Dynasty"

See also The War Game, another nuclear war film the BBC made in 1965 and then banned until the 1980s, and Protect and Survive the 1970s British government information films on nuclear war.