1 hour ago, scotchegg said:

I couldn't find it on YouTube, but that did prompt me to try other places and, Oh my giddy aunt, it's on internet archive:

https://archive.org/details/threads_201712

Because what we all need right now in this period of social stability, calm, and content, is apocalyptic TV!

Yeah, Threads is a right barrel of laughs. Watched it when it first came out on TV. It was rather in-vogue at the time to make something like that, with The Day After having been made by ABC the previous year. The following year - 1985 - The War Game (also a BBC TV production, as was Threads) was finally shown on British TV, that having been the inspiration for writer Barry Hines to create the screenplay for Threads, which is essentially very similar to The War Game in terms of how it plays out, albeit with a different dramatic structure.

The War Game was made in 1965, and it was due to be shown on TV, however the BBC, and the British Government, regarded it as possibly too shocking to be shown to audiences on national TV and the BBC was pressured by the Government of Harold Wilson to not broadcast it at all, so it was only shown in a limited screening at the National Theatre and languished in the archives thereafter, despite being nominated, and winning many awards.

That was as noted until 1985, when many such films including The War Game were shown on TV because it was the fortieth anniversary of the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Opinions about nuclear weaponry were a frequent news item in the UK at that time, owing to a permanent protest by (occasionally up to 30,000) women outside RAF Greenham Common airbase, where USAF nuclear missiles were based. Commencing in late 1981, the protest maintained a presence there until 2000. But back in '85 when it was an operational nuclear base, it emerged there had been a serious incident there in 1958, when a B47 taking off from there lost power on take off and jettisoned its drop tanks in order to stay airborne at its low speed. The drop tanks hit a hangar and a parked B47 which had a nuclear weapon on board, which was engulfed in flames. The fire took almost a day to extinguish.

At the time, the nuclear aspects of the accident were covered up and it was reported as a collision between two taxying aeroplanes. According to some reports (not confirmed, but possibly also covered up) the fire detonated the explosive charges in the nuclear warhead on board the parked B47, which are there to commence the nuclear trigger, and this explosion scattered the nuclear material contained in the weapon over approximately a ten mile footprint downwind of the detonation. This has never been proved to be true, but the emergence of the allegation that this did occur lead to increased support for the protesters at Greenham Common, who had often been actively vilified  as a result of Government pressure on the UK press for years, and directives toward the Police to harass the protesters. Nevertheless, pressure eventually led to the closure of the USAF missile operations at the base a few years later and the base is now completely closed.

If you get a chance to watch threads, or The War Game, they are indeed both quite shocking. They've aged a bit, but the parts where there is a nuclear attack depicted are still very scary and the post-nuclear winter which dooms the populace doesn't pull any punches either, which is why The War Game was pulled when it was first made since unlike a lot of other fictional stories of nuclear wars which have people surviving them, it's made very clear in The War Game that it is game over for the populace.

Edited August 5, 20205 yr by Chock

I’d totally forgotten about The War Game, despite doing a sociology project about it in 6th form, even going to Our Price to order a VHS copy. The memory of Threads must have overpowered it!