The BBC will air an unsettling 1980s film about the impact of a nuclear war attack for just the fourth time in 40 years tonight.
Airing in 1984, the apocalyptic war drama TV film Threads was a ‘dramatic account of nuclear war and its effects in Britain’.
Written by Barry Hines and directed and produced by Mick Jackson (who later went on to helm The Bodyguard), the film was set in Sheffield and followed two families as a confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union erupts.
As the nuclear exchange between NATO and the Warsaw Pact begins, the film depicted the medical, economic, social and environmental consequences of nuclear war.
It featured Paul Vaughan as the Narrator and starred Karen Meagher as Ruth Beckett and Reece Dinsdale as Jimmy Kemp, a young couple who plan to marry after learning of her unplanned pregnancy.
However, as an international crisis deepens, their lives are upended following a devastating nuclear strike.
Shot on a budget of £250,000, at the time it was said that Threads was a film that ‘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 was nominated for seven BAFTA awards in 1985 and won for Best Single Drama, Best Design, Best Film Cameraman, and Best Film Editor.
However, in the subsequent decades since its release, the film has only ever been shown three times.
After first airing in 1984, the national broadcaster showed it again the following year to mark the 40th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
It then aired again 18 years later as part of a cold war special on BBC Four in 2003.
Although the film wasn’t widely reviewed upon its release, The New York Times did label the film ‘unsettlingly powerful’.
Ahead of it airing again this week, Gareth O’Connor wrote on X: ‘There’s a reason this apocalyptic docu-drama is rarely show on television. It’s a very tough watch and gave an entire generation nightmares. Viewer discretion advised.’
‘The scariest thing I’ve ever seen. It conjures a feeling of total hopelessness, which no sentient being should experience. No hope for you, or for your children or for anyone. I had insomnia for a week afterwards,’ Becky Barnicoat added.
Another said they wouldn’t be watching as they were still ‘traumatised’ from the first viewing 40 years ago, while someone else called it ‘the bleakest film I’ve ever seen’.
However, many others urged others to tune into the ‘extremely powerful film’ if they hadn’t watched it before.
In a recent interview with the BBC, Jackson said the message of the movie was trusting people with the truth of what could happen if nuclear war was to be unleashed.
‘That’s what I wanted to get across. That there’s no going back, that this happens. You can’t go back and press replay.’
Threads airs tonight at 10.20pm on BBC Four.
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