Threads is a 1984 apocalyptic anti-war drama television film directed and produced by Mick Jackson and written by Barry Hines. A dramatic account of the potential medical, economic, social, and environmental consequences of a nuclear war in Britain, it follows two families in Sheffield as a confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union erupts into war and a general nuclear exchange between NATO and the Warsaw Pact.
An international co-production between the BBC, Nine Network, and Western-World Television Inc., the film was shot on a budget of £400,000 (equivalent to £ in ).Audio Commentary: Mick Jackson. Threads. Dir. Mick Jackson. 1984. Blu-ray. Severin Films, 2018. It was the first of its kind to depict a nuclear winter and has been cited 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"."Film and the Nuclear Age: Representing Cultural Anxiety" By Toni A. Perrine, p. 237 on Google books. It has been compared to The War Game (1966) and The Day After (1983). It was nominated for seven BAFTA Awards in 1985 and won for Best Single Drama, Best Design, Best Film Cameraman, and Best Film Editor.
Plot In the English city of Sheffield, Ruth Beckett and Jimmy Kemp, who are young adults, plan to marry after learning of Ruth's unplanned pregnancy. Meanwhile, an international crisis develops after the Soviet Union invades northern Iran in response to a United States-backed coup in the country. Daily life in Sheffield continues while an American ultimatum demanding joint withdrawal from Iran expires.
After a limited nuclear exchange in Mashhad, armed conflict breaks out between America and the Soviet Union. As Britain prepares for the possibility of nuclear war, society gradually destabilises over the course of two days and violent suppression of anti-war protests takes place across the country. Inhabitants of Sheffield are spurred into panic buying and looting. Sheffield City Council officials begin setting up emergency administrative operations in a makeshift basement bunker in case the region's centre of government should be destroyed. Ruth's family prepare to use their cellar as a shelter, while Jimmy's family construct a lean-to from mattresses and doors, as instructed by the Protect and Survive pamphlets and television broadcasts.
Jimmy is arguing with panic-buyers at the joinery with his friend Bob when civil defence sirens sound. Taking cover under a lorry, they see a mushroom cloud in the distance; a tactical nuclear attack on a nearby airbase at Finningley causes much collateral damage to Sheffield, while attacks on other NATO targets across Britain kill and injure tens of millions of people. Jimmy attempts to reach Ruth, but is never seen again. Moments later, a 1-megaton weapon detonates over Sheffield. Jimmy's brother Michael is killed in the initial firestorm when their finch aviary collapses, while his mother suffers severe burns and his father falls ill from radiation poisoning in the following days. Ruth and her family fare better in their underground shelter, although Ruth's grandmother soon falls ill.
As the Sheffield council's efforts to maintain order fail, they slowly suffocate in their bunker, which is buried under the rubble of Sheffield Town Hall. Meanwhile, Ruth flees her shelter after her grandmother dies, discovering that society has collapsed over the course of nine days. Because of dangers posed by fallout, rescue efforts and attempts to control fires are halted; local authority has broken down, martial law has been implemented and survivors are left to fend for themselves. Ruth visits Jimmy's house, finding his mother's corpse. She takes Jimmy's Handbook of Foreign Birds as a keepsake, then visits the hospital, which is under-equipped and overwhelmed by hundreds of wounded civilians. By the time Ruth returns home, her parents have been killed by looters.
With food becoming scarce as a result of looting and fires, Ruth travels west to the countryside near Buxton. Food soon becomes the only form of currency as nuclear winter causes a severely diminished harvest and mass starvation. Ruth briefly reunites with Bob as the two reach Buxton, where local authorities unsuccessfully attempt to convince the residents to house refugees. She later gives birth to her daughter alone in an abandoned barn while a chained dog snarls at her outside. One year later, sunlight levels have mostly returned to normal, though damage to the ozone layer means that higher UV levels have increased the risks of cataracts and skin cancer.
A decade later, Britain's surviving population has dropped to an estimated 4 to 11 million – similar to that of the Middle Ages – and the country remains devastated. Ruth and her daughter Jane work in the fields with other survivors, cultivating crops by hand. Because of the elective mutism of many adult survivors, foetal radiation exposure, and the absence of organised schooling, many children born after the war, including Jane, speak non-standard English. Ruth dies in bed, prematurely aged and blinded by cataracts. Jane watches her mother die, responding with apathy and taking the last of Ruth's possessions, leaving behind Jimmy's bird book, which Ruth has kept.
Three years later, industry resumes via limited steam power, although the population still lives in squalor. Jane and two young men are caught stealing food; one of the men is shot dead while the other flees with Jane. They start to fight over who gets to eat first before their struggle degenerates into sex. Jane later gives birth in a makeshift hospital, where the nurse wraps the silent baby in a bloody sheet and gives it to Jane, who looks at it in horror.
Cast
Paul Vaughan as the Narrator Karen Meagher as Ruth Beckett Reece Dinsdale as Jimmy Kemp David Brierley as Bill Kemp Rita May as Mrs Kemp, with Dorothy Ford as her stunt double Nicholas Lane as Michael Kemp Jane Hazlegrove as Alison Kemp Henry Moxon as Gordon Beckett June Broughton as Mrs Beckett Sylvia Stoker as Granny Beckett Harry Beety as Clive Sutton (Controller) Ruth Holden as Marjorie Sutton Ashley Barker as Bob Michael O'Hagan as Chief Superintendent Alan Hirst Phil Rose as Dr Carlton, the Medical Officer Steve Halliwell as Steve, the Information Officer Phil Askham as Mr Stothard Anna Seymour as Mrs Stothard Fiona Rook as Carol Stothard Joe Holmes as George Langley Victoria O'Keefe as Jane Lee Daley as Spike Marcus Lund as Gaz Lesley Judd and Colin Ward-Lewis as Newscasters Anne Sellors as Frightened Woman
Production and themes
Threads was first commissioned (under the working title Beyond Armageddon) by the Director-General of the BBC Alasdair Milne, after he watched the 1966 drama-documentary The War Game, which had not been shown on the BBC when it was made, although it had a limited release in cinemas. 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. 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 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 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 British 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 partly because of its "nuclear-free zone" policy that made the council sympathetic to the local filming and partly because it seemed likely that the USSR would strike an industrial city in the centre of the country.
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. They also disagreed about Paul Vaughan's narration, which Hines felt was detrimental to the drama. 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". A subsequent request by Jackson for the Home Office to provide him with a copy of the training notes was approved on the basis that refusal "could cause offence and give the impression that [the Home Office] had something to hide", with a similar logic underpinning the decision to give him the full and unredacted notes.
Auditions were advertised in The Star, and took place in the ballroom of Sheffield City Hall, where 1,100 candidates turned up. 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. The makeup for extras playing third-degree-burn victims consisted of Rice Krispies and tomato ketchup, while the prop umbilical cord that Ruth bites through after giving birth to Jane was made from liquorice. 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. 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 to heighten the film's impact through the use of characters the audience could relate to. He also made an effort to leave some things (such as the exact state of Jane's baby) unseen, "to let images and emotion happen in people's minds, or rather in the extensions of their imaginations" and so enhance the horror effect.
The circumstances in which Jane's child is conceived towards the end of the film have been interpreted as rape. The screenplay states that "their wrestling turns sexual, and we hear JANE exclaiming as they have crude intercourse."
Release history Broadcast