TV MEMORIES # 10 - THREADS (1984)

The 1980's where a fun time to be alive - the decade that bought us the Rubick's Cube, Pac- Man, Home Computing, E.T., Ghostbusters, Shoulder pads, the Mullet, Charles and Di, Miami Vice, Kylie and Jason and BEST OF ALL...the threat of potential nuclear armageddon at ANY GIVEN MINUTE...erm...wait a second...

Despite the rose tinted specs through which we now view the decade, there was one thing that was constantly at the back of everybody's mind in the 80's and that was the all too real possibility of nuclear war breaking out at any moment. Whether you where a mega rich Hollywood movie star with his own private mansion and a wardrobe full of day-glo Armani suits or (like me) a young boy growing up in a small working class mining town, that fear was always there, festering away in the back of your mind.

For anyone reading this who wasn't around back then, I'm not going to pretend that this fear was constant and all consuming, if it was NOBODY would have been able to function in even the most basic of ways. No, in general we all got on with our day to day lives much as people do now. We just stuck this existential dread into the deepest, darkest corners of our brains and hoped for the best. We used things like Pac-Man and Dallas and Dynasty and Neighbours to distract us from the potential horror we where all facing, much as we use similar distractions to occupy us in the 21st century with it's own set of horrors. We'd pick at the fear every now and then, drag it out of the depths of our brains, analyse it, disregard it (because doing anything else was simply too horrifying to contemplate) and then file it away again...until the next time we where reminded of it.

Because THAT was the problem. We all became so adept at glossing over the fact that we were all living our lives looking down the barrel of a loaded gun, that when something came along that did actually remind us of the fact, we simply couldn't handle it and went into this weird combination of shell shock and panic.

The media (bless thier hearts) seemed to almost sadisticaly revel in this state. Nuclear war penetrated culture (and pop culture) at ALL levels. So that reminder, that fear, was never far away, no matter how hard we tried to forget it and pretend it wasn't there.

These pleasant little "reminders" came in many forms - the Government's handy guide of "Top Tips for what to do in the event of a nuclear war" Protect And Survive landing on your door mat like a friendly orange harbinger of doom. Frankie Goes To Hollywood singing about "Two Tribes" going to war and perhaps...no... DEFINITELY the most chilling of all - the night of 23rd September 1984, the night when BBC2 broadcast a drama film about a nuclear attack on the British city of Sheffield...that film was Threads.

Written by Barry Hines and directed by Mick Jackson. Threads tells the story of two normal working class families going about thier everyday lives in the city of Sheffield. At first you'd think you where just watching an episode of some Northern set soap opera. The main story hinges around an unmaried couple - Ruth Beckett (Karen Meagher) and Jimmy Kemp (Reece Dinsdale) who have just found out that they are expecting a baby. Back in the early 80's being an unmaried mother still carried a certain degree of social stigma that it doesn't have today (told you the 80's were shit), so being a responsible young couple the two decide to marry. The first few scenes of the drama deal with the fall out (no pun intended) of this decision and the impact it has on Ruth and Jimmy's families.

Whilst this domestic minefield is being trodden the outside world is slowly but surely falling into the shit. We hear news broadcasts playing in the background, barely noticeable at first, about the escalating troubles the world is facing. The thing is, the characters we are following are barely paying heed to this, they've all got thier own everyday issues to deal with. This is the first point where Threads hits home - this is EXACTLY what would happen in this situation. The world would be ending and - at first - people wouldn't even notice.

As the story continues, the news broadcasts become more urgent, more insistent. People start to take notice, start to become worried. Panic grips the nation, there's rioting in the streets, panic buying and stockpiling of food (very similar to what happened in 2020). Until suddenly...the unthinkable happens - a nuclear bomb is dropped on Sheffield. Millions die (including Jimmy who is caught in the blast racing home to be with Ruth).

Sheffield (and much of the rest of Great Britain) is left a blackened, smoking, irradiated ruin. Ruth and her parents survive the blast, although Ruth's parents eventually succumb to radiation sickness (they should have taken heed of the advice given in thier Protect And Survive booklet and made sure they where standing behind a flimsy wooden door at all times - that would surely have protected them from the fallout). Ruth is now alone (and still pregnant) facing life in a shattered broken world.

There's a particularly horrific scene that takes place a few days after the attack where Ruth walks alone through the bombed out rubble and corpse strewn streets of what used to be Sheffield. We see blackened burnt bodies, looters being shot at by emergency empowered enforcers and a shell-shocked now clearly insane woman cradling the burnt corpse of her baby. Its shocking, horrific and utterly, utterly bleak.

As the story continues we see more of Ruth's lonely odyssey through this broken Britain. We see the harsh realities of a nuclear winter, we see Ruth's struggles to survive (at one point she has to eat rat meat).

As Ruth becomes increasingly desperate, so does the world around her. Eventually time passes and we see Ruth and her daughter many years later. Surprisingly Ruth's teenage daughter Jane (Victoria O'Keefe) hasn't been born with three eyes or any other hideous radiation caused mutations. Like all kids born into this broken world she hasn't had any schooling and she communicates in a weird half language of broken half formed words and grunts. Ruth on the other hand is prematurely aged and blind and dies in bed presumably from some horrible radiation induced cancer. This leaves Jane just as lonely and desparate as her mother was a generation ago.

Its now Jane's turn to wander the wastelands and - if anything - she fares even worse than her mum did. Jane is raped by a lumbering retarded young man (God, can this get any bleaker ?). The final, lingering scene is of Jane giving birth to her own baby - its stillborn. We don't get to see what the dead baby looks like but one can only imagine the horrific mutations that have been caused. Jane screams and screams and screams. The film ends. Fade to black. JESUS !!!!

After this misery-fest was finished, the reaction round at my house was pretty much like I can imagine it being in every other household in Britain that had subjected themselves to watching this... My parents and me just sat there in a stunned silence for about 3 minutes, saying nothing, just staring at the screen. "Well that was depressing" said my Dad and quickly turned over to ITV, "it was frightening" said my Mum and she was right - it was frightening - BLOODY FRIGHTENING.

For the rest of that night one thought wormed it's way through my 10 year old brain - that if there ever was a nuclear war then I certainly had no intention of being one of the survivors. Even if it meant running out into the blast when the four minute warning went off and feeling the agony of burning alive or being atomised, it would be far FAR preferable to living through what came after. It's testament to the grim power of Threads that it caused a 10 year old boy to contemplate potential suicide in the face of the apocalypse. I should imagine I wasn't the only child (or adult) who had similar thoughts that night.

The following day at school absolutely nobody spoke about the programme. Normally if something this big had been on TV there would have been a playground buzz about it, excited little kids coming out with things like "Did you see the bit where she ate the rat ????" "What about that bit when the bloke burst into flames and there was just a skeleton left behind ????" But no...absolutely nothing. It was was like we'd all gone into denial about what we'd seen. We knew that this was no sci-fi fantasy, this could actually happen.

The 80's continued and thankfully we didn't blow ourselves to smithereens. As the decade drew to an end and the political waters became a bit less choppy, the fear started to lessen a bit.

In 1988 (when I was 14) in my GCSE English class we started to read a book called "Brother In The Land" by Robert Swindells. This novel told the story of a teenage boy and his younger brother who both survive a nuclear holocaust. Like Threads its a grim affair, telling the story of the two young boy's struggle to survive in the post-nuclear world. The book ends with the younger brother dying from radiation sickness. It goes into great detail describing this 8 year old boy getting sick and weak, his hair falling out whilst he vomits and shits himself (this was a KIDS book ???). After we finished reading this book, our teacher then announced that in the next lesson we'd be watching Threads. As if reading about about a little boy dying of radiation poisoning wasn't bad enough.

Anyway, I turned up the following lesson and sat through the entire bloody thing again. In the intervening years it had lost none of its power to shock and terrify. The normally rowdy class of teens sat as still and shocked as I had done with my parents on that night back in '84. I did notice that the class was noticeably smaller that week, several people where missing and it wasn't the usual suspects who would normally bunk off for a fag behind the bikesheds, some of the more conscientious students where conspicuous by thier absence. Maybe it was just coincidence, maybe the flu was just going round that week...somehow I didn't think so. Making us watch Threads TWICE in one lifetime ??? Nobody should have to do that...bloody sadists.

Joking aside - if you've not seen it then I highly recommend that you do. Its not an easy watch and you'll probably feel like hurling yourself off the top of the nearest multi-storey car park after watching it but it remains a chilling, thought provoking and - yes - important piece of television drama. Just pray it never comes true...