I REMEMBER viewing the original TV broadcast of Threads like it was yesterday, sitting cross-legged in front of my parents’ telly, wide-eyed and jaw ajar as the simple part-drama part-documentary tale exploring the impact a full-blown nuclear attack might have on the city of Sheffield unfolded before me.
I was traumatised by everything about it, from the unrelenting bleakness of the visuals to the cold, hard scientific facts that it threw up on screen. More than anything, though, it was the one stark question it asked that really disturbed me: how would we cope in the wake of a nuclear warhead detonating above our skies?
Frankly, the polite answer - and I don’t think I’m giving away much in terms of spoilers here - is not very well at all.
Made in 1984 at the height of cold war paranoia, when it felt more a case of ‘when’ rather than ‘if’ global annihilation would arrive courtesy of the atomic bomb, Threads was a uniquely gripping, genuinely terrifying and deeply disturbing viewing experience then and remains one now.
Watching it again via the recent 40th anniversary screening on the BBC, I can confirm that Threads has lost none of its power to shock despite the passing decades. Unlike other docudramas, such as Peter Watkins’ The War Game, this is, if you’ll excuse the term, a slow-burning viewing experience that introduces us to some of the ordinary civilians about to be impacted by events.
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Characters like Jimmy and Ruth, a young couple played brilliantly by Reece Dinsdale and Karen Meagher, go about their mundane lives while the ever-growing global hostilities go almost unnoticed on TV screens and newspaper headlines in the background. We get to know these people, and it makes the deadly impact we know is just around the corner all the more devastating.
When it finally arrives, the bomb is handled (on a typically low BBC budget, lest we forget) with real skill, as screens go white, sound drops out and society shudders to a halt. It’s a seismic event that tears society asunder and leaves those unfried by the initial explosion to stagger through the radiation-ravished remains in search of lost loved ones and some kind of sustenance amongst the unrelenting horror.
Many of those post bomb sequences are seared onto my imagination to this day. Even the infamous image which adorned the front cover of the Radio Times in that first week of broadcast - a bandaged traffic warden with a rifle slung over his shoulder as he mans the frontline between rioting citizens and what remains of social order - is embedded firmly in my subconscious.
Written by Barry Hines, who’d previously gifted the world the beautifully naturalistic but undeniably grim Kes, and directed brilliantly by future Hollywood helmer Mick Jackson, Threads isn’t an easy watch by any means - don’t make my mistake of watching it late at night or you might find your dreams impacted for days - but it’s well worth the effort if you can stomach the horror.
