Threads (1984 film)

For other uses, see Thread (disambiguation).

Threads
Directed by	Mick Jackson
Written by	Barry Hines
Produced by	Mick Jackson Graham Massey John Purdie Peter Wolfes
Starring	Karen Meagher Reece Dinsdale
Distributed by	BBC
Release date	1984
Running time	112m 27s
Language	English
Budget	£250,000–350,000

Threads is a BAFTA award-winning British television drama produced jointly by the BBC, Nine Network and Western-World Television Inc. in 1984. Written by Barry Hines and directed by Mick Jackson, it is a docudrama account of 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 centred upon the Chief Executive of Sheffield City Council serves to illustrate the British government's then-current continuity of government arrangements. As nuclear exchanges between NATO and the Warsaw Pact begin, 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 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 earlier The War Game produced in Britain in the 1960s and its contemporary The Day After, a 1983 ABC television film depicting a similar scenario in the United States.

Storyline

Background on the war

The chronology of the events leading up to the war is depicted entirely via television and radio news broadcasts. An allegedly US-backed coup d'état in Iran prompts the Soviet Union to occupy the northern part of the country, ostensibly to prevent a return of the Shah's regime. On 8 May, the USA hints at deploying troops to Iran, to prevent the Soviets from reaching the oil fields in the south. On 11 May, the US navy in the Indian Ocean is put on high alert when rumours begin abounding of the disappearance of the USS Los Angeles in the Persian Gulf. The next day, a skirmish in the Gulf of Oman between the Soviet battlecruiser Kirov and the USS Callaghan leaves the former badly damaged. Subsequent discoveries by American and Israeli search and rescue vessels reveal debris and an oil slick from the missing Los Angeles, prompting the US President to warn the Soviets over the possibility of an "armed confrontation – with incalculable consequences for all mankind."

On the 17th, the US sends its rapid deployment force to take defensive positions around Isfahan in western Iran, hoping to intimidate the Soviets from making further advances to the south, with a supporting role being taken by squadrons of B-52 bombers and AWACS early warning aircraft landing at US airbases in Turkey. The Soviets respond by transporting nuclear warheads into their newly established base in Mashhad. On 20 May, the USA proposes a joint withdrawal from Iran to take effect by noon on the 22nd, while Britain sends troops to Europe amidst a build-up of Warsaw Pact troops in East Germany. The Soviets ignore the US ultimatum and, an hour after the expiry, are attacked at their base in Mashhad by B-52 bombers using conventional weapons. The Soviets defend the base with a nuclear warhead, delivered by a surface-to-air missile, destroying many B-52s. The battle ceases after US forces destroy the base with a battlefield nuclear weapon.

The next day, fighting breaks out between the US and Soviet navies. On 24 May, amidst rioting in East Germany, the Soviets cut the road links into and out of West Berlin, whilst offering occupying NATO forces free passage to the west. The USS Kitty Hawk is sunk in the Persian Gulf, and the USA blockades Cuba. Severe damage to Russian consulates ensues during anti-Soviet riots in major US cities. The next day, the BBC reports on the Mashhad nuclear exchange, stating that the weapons used were within the range of 50–100 kilotons, and that cities in western Pakistan are being evacuated due to the fallout.

On 26 May, at 8:35 a.m. GMT, the Soviets detonate a warhead high above the North Sea, producing an electromagnetic pulse which damages communications throughout the UK and Northwestern Europe. Two minutes later, the first missile salvoes begin hitting NATO targets. Overall, the resulting East-West exchanges amount to 3000 megatons, with 210 falling on the UK.

Plot

The Sheffield Royal Infirmary, where the hospital scene takes place.

Young Sheffield residents Ruth Beckett (Karen Meagher) and Jimmy Kemp (Reece Dinsdale) decide to marry due to an unplanned pregnancy. Meanwhile, as tensions between the US and the Soviet Union over Iran escalate, the Home Office directs Sheffield City Council to assemble an emergency operations team, which establishes itself in a makeshift bomb shelter in the basement of the Town Hall. After an ignored US ultimatum to the Soviets results in a brief nuclear skirmish, Britain is gripped by fear, with looting and rioting erupting. "Known subversives" (including peace activists and some trade unionists) are arrested and interned under the Emergency Powers Act.

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

At 8:30 a.m. (3:30 a.m. in Washington, D.C.) on 26 May, Attack Warning Red is transmitted, and Sheffield's air raid sirens sound. A warhead air bursts over the North Sea, then another hits RAF Finningley 20 miles (32 km) from Sheffield. In the ensuing chaos, Jimmy is last seen attempting to reach Ruth. Strategic targets, including steel and chemical factories in the Midlands, are attacked, with two-thirds of all homes being destroyed and immediate deaths ranging between 17 and 30 million. Sheffield itself is devastated by a one megaton warhead hitting the Tinsley Viaduct. Nuclear fallout keeps rescuers from fighting fires or rescuing those trapped under the debris. The Sheffield emergency operations team is trapped beneath the rubble of the Town Hall, with rescue being impossible due to the high levels of radiation and the blockage of all roads. Within hours, fallout from a ground burst at Crewe begins descending upon Sheffield, with the surviving Kemps succumbing to radiation sickness. Ruth goes to Buxton hospital, where there is no electricity, no running water and no sanitation, with drugs and medical supplies having long since run out.

A month after the attack, soldiers dig into the Town Hall basement and find that the emergency operations staff have all died of suffocation. No efforts are made to bury the dead, as the surviving population is too weak for manual labour. Burning the bodies is considered a waste of fuel and so millions are left unburied, leading to an outbreak of diseases such as cholera and typhoid. The government authorises the use of capital punishment and special courts are authorised to shoot prisoners. As money no longer has any value, the only viable currency is food, given as a reward for work or withheld as punishment. Due to the millions of tons of soot, smoke and dust that have been blown into the upper atmosphere, a nuclear winter develops. Ruth is later working on a farm in Buxton, having defied official advice and fled the city, eventually giving birth in a farm out-building to a daughter.

A year after the war, sunlight begins to return but food production is poor due to the lack of proper equipment, fertilisers and fuel. Damage to the ozone layer also means this sunlight is heavy with ultraviolet radiation, with cataracts and cancer becoming more common.

Ten years later, Britain's population falls to medieval levels of around 4 to 11 million people. Survivors work in fields using primitive farming tools, and children born since the attack are educationally stunted, speaking a broken form of English. Prematurely aged and blind with cataracts, Ruth dies, survived by her 10-year-old daughter Jane (Victoria O'Keefe). By this time, the country recovers slightly, with some resumption of manual coal mining, limited electricity, and some mechanisation from traction engines. However, the population continues to live in squalid conditions among the ruins.

Three years after Ruth's death, Jane and two boys are caught stealing food. One boy is shot in the ensuing confusion, and Jane wrestles for the food with the other boy and ends up having what the script describes as "crude intercourse". Months later, and full term, Jane finds a makeshift hospital and gives birth. The film ends just as she is about to scream in horror as she looks upon her stillborn baby.

Production and themes

Our intention in making Threads was to step aside from the politics and – I hope convincingly – show the actual effects on either side should our best endeavours to prevent nuclear war fail.

— Screenwriter Barry Hines

Threads was first commissioned by the Director-General of the BBC Alasdair Milne, after he watched the then, limited release, 1965 documentary The War Game. Mick Jackson was hired to direct the film, as he had previously worked in the nuclear apocalypse genre in 1982, producing the BBC Q.E.D. documentary A Guide to Armageddon. 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. 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 on a possible attack scenario and the extent of the damage were derived from Doomsday: A Nuclear Attack on the United Kingdom (1983), while the ineffective post-war plans of the UK government came from Duncan Campbell's 1982 exposé War Plan UK. In portraying the psychological damage suffered by survivors, Jackson took inspiration from the behaviour of the Hibakusha and Magnus Clarke's 1982 book Nuclear Destruction of Britain. Sheffield was chosen as the main location on account of its "Nuclear Free Zone" policy.

Jackson hired Barry Hines to write the script on account of his political awareness. The relationship between the two was however strained on several occasions, as Hines spent much of his time on set, and apparently disliked Jackson on account of his middle class upbringing. 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'.

Auditions were advertised in The Star, and took place in the ballroom of Sheffield City Hall, where 1,100 candidates turned up. All extras were chosen on the basis of height and age, and were all told to look 'miserable' and to wear raggedy clothes. The makeup for extras playing third degree burn victims consisted of Rice Krispies and tomato ketchup. The scenes taking place six weeks after the attack were shot in Peak District National Park, though 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.

Jackson later recalled that unlike most BBC productions, which once finished airing would immediately result in phone calls of congratulations from friends or colleagues, 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 later said that he had it on good authority that Ronald Reagan watched the film when it aired in the US.

Cast

Although Jackson initially considered casting actors from Coronation Street, Jackson later decided to take a neorealist approach, and opted to cast relatively unknown actors in order to heighten the film's impact through using characters the audience could relate to.

The Kemps

• Reece Dinsdale as Jimmy Kemp
• David Brierley as Mr Kemp
• Rita May as Mrs Kemp
• Nicholas Lane as Michael Kemp
• Jane Hazlegrove as Alison Kemp

The Becketts

• Karen Meagher as Ruth Beckett
• Henry Moxon as Mr Beckett
• June Broughton as Mrs Beckett
• Sylvia Stoker as Granny Beckett

Emergency operations team

• Harry Beety as Clive J. Sutton (Controller)
• Michael O'Hagan as Chief Supt. Hirst
• Phil Rose as Dr Carlton (Medical Officer)
• Steve Halliwell as Steve (Information Officer)
• Brian Grellis as Accommodation Officer
• Peter Faulkner as Transportation Officer
• Anthony Collin as Roger Fisher (Food Officer)
• Michael Ely as Scientific Advisor
• Sharon Baylis as Susan Russell (Manpower Officer)
• David Stutt as George Cox (Works Officer)

Others

• Ashley Barker as Bob
• Ruth Holden as Marjorie Sutton
• Phil Askham as Mr Stothard
• Anna Seymour as Mrs Stothard
• Fiona Rook as Carol Stothard
• Maggie Ford as Peace Speaker
• Mike Kay as Trade Unionist
• Lesley Judd and Colin Ward-Lewis as Newscasters
• Paul Vaughan as the Narrator
• Victoria O'Keefe as Jane
• Lee Daley as Spike
• Marcus Lund as Gaz

Broadcast and release history

Threads works on the viewer with a peculiar power: one finds oneself horrified, fascinated, numbed, provoked, unsettled, made restless. Its power may be the effect of its oscillation between form and content being so heavily weighted toward the pole of content—in this case, that threat of nuclear destruction which cannot help but feel "real"--so that we are unable to relax into Threads as "just" a movie, as we do when watching, say, Terminator II: Judgment Day (1991).

— Andrew Bartlett

Threads was a co-production of the BBC, Nine Network Australia 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 (6.9 million) of the week. 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. Threads was broadcast in the United States on cable network Superstation TBS on 13 January 1985, followed by a panel discussion on nuclear war. It was also shown in syndication to local commercial stations and, later, on many PBS stations. Threads was broadcast in Australia on the Nine Network on 19 June 1985. Unusually for a commercial network, it broadcast the film without commercial breaks.

Threads was originally released by BBC Video (on VHS and, for a very short period, Betamax) in 1987 (catalogue number BBCV4071) 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.

Reception

Threads 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.

See also

• Able Archer 83, NATO command post exercise that resulted in the 1983 nuclear war scare and changed thinking about nuclear war in Britain.
• 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.
• List of nuclear holocaust fiction
• Nuclear weapons and the United Kingdom
• Nuclear weapons in popular culture
• 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.
• 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.
• World War III, a 1998 German mockumentary depicting a nuclear war following a hardline communist coup against Mikhail Gorbachev.

External links

• 'Threads' in pictures at BBC South Yorkshire
• Threads at the Internet Movie Database
• Threads at AllMovie
• Threads at the BFI's Screenonline