Threads

Threads from Peski TV on Vimeo.

After more than thirty years, this remains the single most disturbing film I have ever seen.

Threads is a 1984 BAFTA award-winning British television drama, produced jointly by the BBC, Nine Network and Western-World Television Inc. Written by Barry Hines and directed by Mick Jackson, it is a docudrama account ofnuclear war and its effects on the city of Sheffield in Northern England.

The primary plot centres on two families, the working-class Kemps and the middle-class Becketts, as a confrontation 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 storyline with the Chief Executive of Sheffield City Council serves to illustrate the British government's then-currentcontinuity of government arrangements. As the nuclear exchange between NATO and the Warsaw Pact begin, the film depicts the terrible details of the characters' struggles to survive both the attacks and their aftermath. The balance of the story outlines the fate of each family as the characters face the medical, economic, social and environmental consequences of nuclear war.