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MICHAEL ASPEL announces the end of the world while a boy’s face catches fire and a bloke’s cabbages get squashed. Famously buried until 1985 by a scared Beeb in the same place they now keep all those episode of Have I Got News For You with Paul Merton referring to Princess Diana as “an overblown tart”. PETER WATKINS wrote and directed, inspired by the UK’s then-hapless and half-arsed “official” plans on what to do when the balloon went up, i.e. send a man round on a motorbike to tell everyone to keep their head down. Resulting unrelentingly grim and grisly carnage still shocks today, and not just by having Asp on voiceover.
TVS
June 26, 2009 at 6:48 pm
“I don’t wanna be nuffing”
With all the Wacko Jacko rubbish on Al Beeb…I thought I would cheer myself up and watch this.
Top draw viewing and still scary, even in black and white…a great piece of social history.
Lee James Turnock
May 4, 2010 at 3:22 pm
Not the kind of thing to watch if you need cheering up.
johnnyboy
May 27, 2011 at 12:45 am
Voiceover to woman in street: “Do you know what Strontium 90 will do to the human body?”
Woman (in unsettlingly posh accent), “I’m so sorry. I’ve no idea what that is.”
Kevin
August 6, 2012 at 12:51 pm
One of the hideously laughable bits is the self-important Civil Defence chap telling the viewers that the government leaflet on protecting yourself against nuclear attack cost ninepence. As the American’s would say even in death we were being nickled and dimed…
Glenn Aylett
April 24, 2021 at 1:50 pm
An interesting choice of location for the place that was nuked was Rochester, due to being near to RAF Manston. Again in 1984, rather than choosing London, the BBC used Sheffield for Threads. Perhaps this was to show anywhere that was near an RAF station, had a large amount of industry and was a railway junction( Crewe is mentioned in Threads) could be attacked.