British TV Movie ‘Threads’ Made ‘The Day After’ Seem Pleasant
In 1983, U.S. TV viewers were traumatized after the TV movie The Day After — depicting a nuclear attack on America from the point of view of citizens of Lawrence, Kansas — aired on ABC on Nov. 20.
Then the British said, “Here. Hold my Guinness.”
On Sept. 23, 1984, Threads aired on BBC Two in the U.K., and was even darker and more horrifying than The Day After. There is no sense of hope (or Steve Guttenberg) in Threads. It’s just the long, slow, agonizing death of civilization.
While The Day After focused on the immediate aftermath of the nuclear attack, Threads went much further in showing the long-term consequences of nuclear holocaust, including nuclear winter, societal collapse, starvation and the impact on future generations. Eventually, language and customs disintegrate, and humanity descends into a new Dark Age.
Threads was much more graphic, too. People (the lucky ones, anyway) simply got vaporized in The Day After. Threads was far more detailed in its portrayal of suffering, death and destruction with scenes showing radiation burns, rotting bodies and the total collapse of infrastructure.
Threads recently aired on BBC Four in the U.K. in commemoration of the movie’s 40th anniversary, and those too young to have viewed one of the rare broadcasts have been encouraged to watch it.
Threads aired in the U.S. in 1985, most notably on TBS with an introduction by Ted Turner:
Both Threads and The Day After stirred political and public discourse about nuclear war at a time when NATO and the Warsaw Pact were ready to annihilate each other within the blink of an eye. With geopolitical tensions again rising between NATO and Russia, these films seem more relevant than they have in over 30 years.
Let’s hope they remain cautionary sci-fi tales and not prophecies of things to come.
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