I was 11 years old when I saw the mushroom cloud go up but this wasn’t Hiroshima or Nagasaki in the 1940s – it was Sheffield in the 1980s.
I was one of nearly seven million people who sat down on the evening of 23 September 1984 to watch a BBC drama called Threads, written by Barry Hines. For many viewers, choosing to watch this film about a nuclear attack on Britain turned out to be an epochal decision.
Threads begins as a kitchen-sink drama, focused around a young couple in Sheffield. The realism of their lives is deftly blended with a documentary narration, making everything seem as real as any fictional drama ever could. The creeping horror of the first half, with the build-up to war played out through news reports in the background of the characters’ ordinary lives, made me want to scream, to make them see the horror that was obviously coming. The tension was built so mercilessly that it became physically painful for the viewer.
Then came the attack itself: first, the blast, then the firestorm and then the radioactive fallout. The fact that it was ordinary British homes and high streets being blown to pieces – including the destruction of British Home Stores and Woolworths – meant Threads packed a particular punch. There were charred corpses, writhing cats and a woman wetting herself, all punctuated by screaming.
Following the attack there’s a swift descent into weapons-grade madness, on both a societal and individual scale. A traumatised mother cradles her dead baby and glares into the viewers’ eyes accusingly; fathers play with the toys that are the only traces of their lost children; limbs are amputated without anaesthetic in a hospital overflowing with blood and agony; and then our heroine is forced to offer sexual favours in return for some dead rats to eat.
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in