Britainology 94: Threads (1984) feat. Jamie Allerton
Added 2024-11-22 21:32:34 +0000 UTCFor this month's first Britainology, we've decided to watch a sunny, optimistic film from 1984 called THREADS. You may have heard of it—it's a slice-of-life kitchen sink drama set in Sheffield, except a nuclear war breaks out between the US and the Soviet Union, resulting in a total and complete apocalypse. It is... harrowing to say the least, but we tried to find something interesting to say about it.
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Comments
so i haven’t actually seen this film and i don’t know if my mental health can take it. pals, do i watch it?
Nina
2025-04-08 17:34:06 +0000 UTCYears ago i took a once-a-week, 3-hours-at-a-time class titled "post WW2 Diplomacy". The week we covered the Cuban Missile Crisis, the professor had us play-act the sequence of events with everyone assigned a role. The guy who was made McNamara kept going off script to demand a nuclear first strike on Cuba and the USSR. The next week we watched Threads and he finally shut the fuck up for once.
Rapture Helmet
2024-12-04 03:13:53 +0000 UTCThere was a similar film called The Day After made in the US at the same time, set in kansas. I think Reagan actually watched that movie instead of threads
Kvvvy
2024-11-28 19:32:06 +0000 UTCNOW a touring member of Arcade Fire???
Watthew
2024-11-27 13:23:36 +0000 UTCHaving watched this film a number of times I have a lot of opinions on it... anyway, one of the things that Barry Hines got right is the way in which the unfolding crisis in the first half of the film seems like background noise or a bit of a nuisance in the lives of so many people (see Mrs Kemp's puzzled observation of the panic buying, Mr Beckett watching the news and reading the papers without becoming a gibbering wreck) until it cannot be ignored. Mr Kemp isn't taking the doors off the hinges until 8am on the day.
Fatticus Inch
2024-11-26 07:56:46 +0000 UTCThe Last Harvest sequence and everything beyond is just devastating. No light, hope just pure, animalistic terror and despair. I don't think I've ever felt like that watching a film before... 10/10 would watch again lol
A Horse In A Man Costume
2024-11-25 20:19:19 +0000 UTCThrowing in a rec for Harry's Game, a grim miniseries about a British intelligence officer who goes undercover during the troubles.
BarFly
2024-11-25 14:34:35 +0000 UTCThere is an excellent story on AlternateHistory.com called Protect and Survive which was inspired largely by Threads. It's a very well researched depiction of the events and aftermath of nuclear war in Britain. It ended up inspiring a series of other stories based in the same universe, from such diverse points of view as a British V-Bomber crew, a Midwestern teenager, and a Miami cop.
BarFly
2024-11-25 14:33:02 +0000 UTCAlso, very curious to find out if poohtin can find anything left worth slinging one of his "new" hazel rods at hereabouts. In a kinda despairing way. I'll shut up now.
Athena Von Tharsis
2024-11-25 14:08:19 +0000 UTCNah,the bunker is under the electrical switch building at the roundabout where Hanover way meets Eccleshall rd. Also, the council building replaced by winter gardens was called the "Eggbox". You are absolutely correct regarding Shef's industrial heritage, and also the hollowing out of our industrial base largely as an attack by conservative gvts on the ability of our left leaning council's ability to maintain public services and quality of life. However, the people here are generally speaking great, and it's a wonderfully diverse and creative city despite the ravages of deindustrialisation and austerity.
Athena Von Tharsis
2024-11-25 13:24:57 +0000 UTCThat bunker is actually under a large brutalist building that houses electrical switch gear and occaisionally art exhibitions on the top floor.
Athena Von Tharsis
2024-11-25 13:20:22 +0000 UTCI’m sure The Day After is corny in comparison but it delivered trauma to many a Yank in my age cohort. And I think we had to watch it for school??? We had to read Lord of the Flies too, a bit older. What really bakes my noodle is that we read The Lottery (Shirley Jackson) in grammar school. Whose bright idea was that??
Shivvy
2024-11-25 04:49:58 +0000 UTCAlso the Glorious 25th of May was the Ankh Morpork civil war
Winson Paine
2024-11-24 22:52:19 +0000 UTCI was nine years old when The Day After came out and we watched it and baby me threw up and stopped being able to sleep for about 24 hours, I should revisit it
Winson Paine
2024-11-24 22:37:11 +0000 UTCGimme thread till I’m dead
MCL
2024-11-24 20:14:26 +0000 UTCI remember this, but The Day After was so corny. American TV would never air something with a documentary-style title card like ‘expanded military powers’ and then cut to a scene of US soldiers stripping and SAing a blast survivor in a barn. However we were forced to read Lord of the Flies, the British allegory involving little boys stranded alone on an island that was bizarrely misconstrued as a book for young children, in 4th grade.
MI
2024-11-24 14:09:14 +0000 UTCYou never get any closure on Jimmy, but later on, you do get a scene of his friend Bob trying to be all chummy with Ruth while she gnaws on a heel of bread and it’s like bruhh, and then they eat a dead sheep together
MI
2024-11-24 13:08:13 +0000 UTCThanks for doing this, this film was very upsetting for me and this episode has been very therapeutic in addressing these feelings.
Thomas Salsbury
2024-11-24 08:55:26 +0000 UTC2 Threads 1 Vape
Sami
2024-11-24 03:43:30 +0000 UTCaaaaand I was correct LOL
Shivvy
2024-11-24 03:20:52 +0000 UTCMilo’s gf pointing out the cheating plot line is gonna be even funnier now that I’m paying attention
Shivvy
2024-11-24 02:57:34 +0000 UTCshhh
Shivvy
2024-11-24 02:54:31 +0000 UTCneat
Shivvy
2024-11-24 02:54:20 +0000 UTCI sort of eased into y’all chatting and letting the voices wash over me bc I sure enjoy my parasocial pals! before my brain reminded me MANY minutes in OH THIS IS 🇬🇧 THE DAY AFTER. THIS IS THE TRAUMATIC 🤯 MOVIE and have had to fully rewind LOL
Shivvy
2024-11-24 02:52:07 +0000 UTCBabbi coming!
Sami
2024-11-24 01:15:13 +0000 UTCIf you're in the mood for a US based, low budget, post nuclear film that has similar levels of unremitting bleakness, may I recommend Testament (1983)? That's the only film I've ever seen that matches the sense of 'run TOWARDS the mushroom cloud' that Threads has
UnMalthusiastic
2024-11-23 23:12:18 +0000 UTCFun fact Huntsville is actually really high on the cities to nuke list because it’s home to the Army Missile Defense Agency and they do a lot of aerospace shit on Redstone Arsenal
Joe Wakefield
2024-11-23 23:02:18 +0000 UTCSecond Squeeze connection: They wrote “What Have They Done?” for the When The Wind Blows soundtrack
Josh Wilcock
2024-11-23 18:52:27 +0000 UTCThis episode is making me feel my age. I was 11 in 1984. It's not that Sheffield was a target, It's that we thought the whole of Europe would be bombed - Sheffield is just an example. The message was that the whole world would be this.
Seth Bennett
2024-11-23 18:08:41 +0000 UTCI watched this movie as a German exchange student to Canada, and our 11th grade social studies teacher showed it to us. I remember some students walking out bc they couldn't handle the grimness, and our teacher reprimanded them to stay bc it the movie was "very important". I will say I found it shocking back then without even getting any of the references you talk about
Julian Gricksch
2024-11-23 15:28:04 +0000 UTCIncredibly narrow announcement band, but they are screening it tonight (11/23) at IFC if any NYC-based hogs see this in time... and feel like making that their Saturday night
Ijon Tichy
2024-11-23 14:11:21 +0000 UTCAs a listener who lives in Huntsville Alabama I need Milo to step away from the lathe
Joe Wakefield
2024-11-23 13:59:06 +0000 UTCThe kids speaking broken English. Isn't that because they are supposed to have learning disabilities due to the radiation? That's how I interpreted it
Алекс Тинмен
2024-11-23 13:44:16 +0000 UTCAmericans are just people. The protagonists of Civil War on the other hand, WaPo correspondents.
benabu
2024-11-23 11:36:32 +0000 UTCSome notes as a former Sheffield resident: - Sheffield Council was one of the most left-wing councils in the UK when Threads was made (unfortunately this is no longer the case). Sheffield was the first city in the UK to be twinned with a city in the Soviet Union (Stalino, now Donetsk, in the Ukrainian SSR) and few years before Threads came out the council declared the city a nuclear free zone. - Sheffield was a much bigger military target when Threads came out because we still had a steel industry which was critical to the armed forces. Now its mostly just Forgemasters which got nationalised by the MoD before it went bankrupt as they needed at least one domestic steel source for military purposes. - I think the brutalist council building you mentioned is the extension to the Town Hall which was demolished in the early 2000s and replaced with the Winter Gardens. - Around 600 Sheffielders volunteered to take part in the movie quite a lot of whom were wearing their personal clothes rather than a costume which is why it looks so realistic to the time.
Sadie
2024-11-23 11:21:14 +0000 UTCI never thought it would happen, with me and an Iranian nuclear weapon🎵
Jimi Smith
2024-11-23 09:10:25 +0000 UTCYeah how could a proxy war in a peripheral country lead to an all out nuclear war. That could never happen *looks at Ukraine*
Joshua Fitzpatrick
2024-11-23 08:04:49 +0000 UTCListening to this at 5am walking to work in the rain, heard some jets go overhead. Ominous
lunchpin
2024-11-23 05:57:49 +0000 UTCI think the polar opposite movie of this is A24s Alex Garland's Civil War. Both are movies about the worst thing the film makers could imagine at the moment, Post-Nuclear society and Post-Trump going dictator. But, threads follows everyday British people: punters, yobos, nans, regular dogging enthusiasts suffering everyman human misery. Meanwhile, Civil War follows Americans, the most main character ass civilization since Napoleonic France, the types of Americans for whom the action is the Juice. For the American the worst thing you can imagine is an opportunity to go Dudes Rock. For the 80s Brit, The worst thing you can imagine is an opportunity to imagine increasingly worse things.
chris
2024-11-23 04:52:21 +0000 UTCOr on 'as time goes by', 'keeping up appearances' or 'one foot in the grave'?
Himbo Slice
2024-11-23 03:12:32 +0000 UTCCould you do an episode of britainology about the TV show 'minder'?
Himbo Slice
2024-11-23 03:11:31 +0000 UTCSickos: Yes... Ha ha ha... Yes!
Hadyn H. Gay Abbeysme
2024-11-23 03:08:57 +0000 UTCThe scary single synth noise is from the Protect and Survive public information films which were a real thing https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7yrv505R-0U
Callum Butler
2024-11-23 01:24:42 +0000 UTCWell that's why it's important to get involved in local politics isnt it? By participating in our democratic system you could make sure the people against the wall are the ones who've wronged or inconvenienced you personally
Jack
2024-11-23 00:51:23 +0000 UTCPanorama did a doco called “If The Bomb Drops” a few years before Threads and features an interview with a local council chief exec who is absolutely relishing hypothetically being able to have people executed by death squads
Callum Butler
2024-11-23 00:09:26 +0000 UTCThe pub scene where someone tries to put on a game show as the news is going over just how fucked the situation is in Iran is one of those things I think of more than I'd like, especially the last few months.
Andrew Davis
2024-11-22 23:49:12 +0000 UTCwow I love to listen to comedy media recap podcasts to distract me from the state of the world!
etienne
2024-11-22 23:19:59 +0000 UTCNot quite as affecting but an earlier, banned film called The War Game (1966) is worth watching too. Although it's set in Kent (quite a lot of it in my hometown) so it's hard to tell the difference between before and after the nukes
Samuel Wicks
2024-11-22 22:53:05 +0000 UTCThought the guy's hat said Waffle House for a bit there....
Rain
2024-11-22 22:13:09 +0000 UTCi am so darkly excited, this film affected me in such a strong way
sillyfellow
2024-11-22 21:35:15 +0000 UTC
