Threads is a 1984 British-Australian apocalyptic war drama television film jointly produced by the BBC, Nine Network and Western-World Television Inc. Written by Barry Hines and directed and produced by Mick Jackson, it is a dramatic account of nuclear war and its effects in Britain, specifically on the city of Sheffield in Northern England. The plot centres on two families as a confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union erupts. As the nuclear exchange between NATO and the Warsaw Pact begins, the film depicts the medical, economic, social and environmental consequences of nuclear war.^[2]

Shot on a budget of £400,000 (equivalent to £1,067,204 in 2019), the film was the first of its kind to depict a nuclear winter. It has been called "a 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."^[3] It has been compared to the earlier Academy Award-winning programme The War Game (1966) produced in the United Kingdom two decades prior and its contemporary counterpart The Day After, a 1983 ABC television film depicting a similar scenario in the United States. It was nominated for seven BAFTA awards in 1985 and won for Best Single Drama, Best Design, Best Film Cameraman, and Best Film Editor.

In the English city of Sheffield, young adults Ruth Beckett and Jimmy Kemp 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 an American-backed coup in the country. The situation quickly escalates as daily life in Sheffield continues, culminating in armed conflict breaking out between the two superpowers. As Britain prepares for the possibility of nuclear war, society gradually destabilizes from panic buying, looting, and violent suppression of anti-war protests.

Early in the morning, the Soviets launch a nuclear strike, first disabling communications across Britain and northwestern Europe before attacking NATO military targets, then economic and industrial centers. The attack injures hundreds and kills tens of millions, including Jimmy and his family, owing to not only the blast itself, but also fires and radiation poisoning. The damage quickly results in societal collapse: firefighting and rescue attempts are halted to avoid spreading fallout, hospitals are overwhelmed and under-equipped, and the city council suffocates in their bunker over the course of a month. Local government breaks down, the federal government is mostly ignored, and survivors are mostly left to fend for themselves. Food becomes scarce as a result of looting and nuclear winter-induced crop failures, resulting in it becoming the only form of currency, awarded for labour and withheld as punishment. Following the death of her grandmother, Ruth flees her family's basement shelter. Her parents are later killed by looters. Fleeing to the Buxton countryside, where local authorities unsuccessfully attempt to convince the residents to house refugees, she eventually gives birth to her daughter, alone.

10 years later, what remains of Britain's surviving population has dropped to a medieval level of 4 to 11 million people, and the UK remains devastated. Survivors primarily work in cultivating crops by hand or with basic tools, and children born after the war speak a reduced and broken form of English due to the absence of organised schooling. Ruth dies in bed, prematurely aged and blinded by cataracts. She is survived by her teenage daughter, Jane. Three years after Ruth's death, industry begins to return with limited electricity achieved through steam power, but the population continues to live in squalor. Jane and two boys are caught stealing food. One of the boys is killed, and Jane and the other boy engage in a struggle for food that degenerates into "crude intercourse."^[4] Months later, Jane gives birth in a makeshift hospital, and the film ends on a silent freeze frame as she looks at her baby in horror.

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, due to pressure from the Wilson government, although it had had a limited release in cinemas.^[6] 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.^[7][8] 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.^{[citation needed]} Jackson subsequently travelled around the UK and the US, consulting leading scientists, psychologists, doctors, defence specialists and strategic experts in order to create the most realistic depiction of nuclear war possible for his next film.^[9] 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 UK government came from Duncan Campbell's 1982 exposé War Plan UK.^[10] In portraying the psychological damage suffered by survivors, Jackson took inspiration from the behaviour of the Hibakusha^[6] and Magnus Clarke's 1982 book Nuclear Destruction of Britain.^[10] Sheffield was chosen as the main location partly because of its "nuclear-free zone" policy that made the council sympathetic to the local filming^[5] and partly because it seemed likely that the USSR would strike an industrial city in the centre of the country.^[11]

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.^[9] They also disagreed about Paul Vaughan's narration, which Hines felt was detrimental to the drama.^[12] 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".^[13]

Auditions were advertised in The Star,^[14] and took place in the ballroom of Sheffield City Hall, where 1,100 candidates turned up.^[13] 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.^[12] The makeup for extras playing third-degree-burn victims consisted of Rice Krispies and tomato ketchup.^[14] 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.^[13] 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 in order to heighten the film's impact through the use of characters the audience could relate to.^[9]

In order for the horror of Threads to work, Jackson made an effort to leave some things unseen: "to let images and emotion happen in people's minds, or rather in the extensions of their imaginations".^[12] He later recalled that while BBC productions would usually be followed by phone calls of congratulations from friends or colleagues immediately after airing, no such calls came after the first screening of Threads. Jackson later "realised...that people had just sat there thinking about it, in many cases not sleeping or being able to talk". He stated that he had it on good authority that Ronald Reagan watched the film when it aired in the US.^[9] Along with Hines, Jackson also received a letter of praise from Labour leader Neil Kinnock, stating "the dangers of complacency are much greater than any risks of knowledge".^[12][15]

Threads was a co-production of the BBC, Nine Network and Western-World Television, Inc. It was first broadcast on BBC Two on 23 September 1984 at 9:30 pm, and achieved the highest ratings on the channel (6.9 million) of the week.^[5] It was repeated on BBC One on 1 August 1985 as part of a week of programmes marking the fortieth anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which also saw the first television screening of The War Game (which had been deemed too disturbing for television in the 20 years since it had been made). Threads was not shown again on British screens until the digital channel BBC Four broadcast it in October 2003.^[17] It was also shown on UKTV Documentary in September 2004 and was repeated in April 2005.^[18]

Threads was broadcast in the United States on cable network Superstation TBS on 13 January 1985,^[19] with Ted Turner presenting the introduction.^[20] This was followed by a panel discussion on nuclear war. It was also shown in syndication to local commercial stations and, later, on many PBS stations. In Canada, Threads was broadcast on Citytv in Toronto, CKVU in Vancouver^[21] and CKND in Winnipeg,^[22] while in Australia it was shown on the Nine Network on 19 June 1985.^[23] Unusually for a commercial network, it broadcast the film without commercial breaks;^[24] many commercial outlets in the United States and Canada that broadcast the film also did so without commercial interruption, or interrupting only for disclaimers or promos. In January 2018, journalist Julie McDowall led a distributed viewing of the film, encouraging the audience to share their reactions on Twitter under the hashtag #threaddread, as part of a campaign to ask the BBC to show the movie for the first time since 2003.^[12]

Threads was originally released by BBC Video (on VHS and, for a very short period, Betamax) in 1987 in the United Kingdom. The film was re-released on both VHS and DVD in 2000 on the Revelation label, followed by a new DVD edition in 2005. Due to licensing difficulties the 1987 release replaced Chuck Berry's recording of his song "Johnny B. Goode" with an alternative recording of the song. In all these cases, the original music over the opening narration was removed, again due to licensing problems; this was an extract from the Alpine Symphony by Richard Strauss, performed by the Dresden State Opera Orchestra, conducted by Rudolf Kempe (HMV ASD 3173).

On 13 February 2018, Threads was released by Severin Films on Blu-ray in the United States.^[25][26] The programme was scanned in 2K from a broadcast print for this release, including extras such as an audio commentary with Director Mick Jackson and interviews with actress Karen Meagher, Director Of Photography Andrew Dunn, Production Designer Christopher Robilliard and film writer Stephen Thrower.^[27][28] This is also the first home video release in which the extract from the Alpine Symphony remains intact.

On 9 April 2018, Simply Media released a Special Edition DVD in the UK, featuring a different 2K scan, restored and remastered from the original BBC 16mm CRI prints, which Severin did not have access to. This also featured all the original music, for the first time on home video in the UK. Whereas the previous releases had no extra features, the Special Edition included commentaries and associated documentaries.

The film was nominated for seven BAFTA awards in 1985. It won for Best Single Drama, Best Design, Best Film Cameraman and Best Film Editor. Its other nominations were for Best Costume Design, Best Make-Up, and Best Film Sound.^[39]

• Able Archer 83, NATO command post exercise that resulted in the 1983 nuclear war scare and changed thinking about nuclear war in Britain
• List of nuclear holocaust fiction
• Nuclear weapons in popular culture
• Nuclear weapons and the United Kingdom
• Square Leg, a military analysis of the effects of a nuclear war on Britain, whose scenario the film somewhat follows
• Protect and Survive, the 1970s British government information films on nuclear war
• When the Wind Blows, a 1986 animated British film that shows a nuclear attack on Britain by the Soviet Union from the viewpoint of a retired couple
• Testament, a 1983 film about a nuclear explosion over the US
• Brother in the Land a 1984 novel for teenagers by Robert Swindells, about a boy's struggle for survival in the aftermath of a nuclear war.
• The Day After, a 1983 television film about a nuclear exchange between the US and the Soviet Union
• The War Game, a 1966 film about a nuclear strike and aftermath in the UK