AndyBlade
18-06-2009, 10:21 PM
I grew up in and around Sheffield. A few of us got together a couple of weeks ago, like we do every once in a while, and we got talking about our old junior school, which is closing its doors for good at the end of this term. Back in the winter of 83/84, the BBC came to town, which was big news at the time, to make a stand alone drama based around the concept of a couple of nuclear warheads being dropped in and around the city. This was the era of the governments nuclear advisory leaflets dropping through letterboxes and the possibilty of nuclear war being much more real than it seems to be today. Anyway, for a couple of days, we got some bonus time off as the production crew used the interior of the school for some filming and the classrooms and common areas as staff canteens and so on. We got to hang around and watch some of the filming, and I still remember being mesmerised watching the actors wandering around after having been made up.
I only got to see Threads some six years later, when we watched it at school as part of our GCSE coursework, and then again about ten years later. After talking about it the other day, I dug out my old DVD and rewatched it again.
A very brave piece of televison at the time, while its very dated in its look 25 years later, its still a really powerful and bleak 90 minutes. Theres a lot of very memorable scenes on show - even though years go by inbetween viewings, I still sit there and think 'this is the bit where....' and so on. Of course, the bombs dropping is only the beginning of the story, as the second half shows what happens to those unlucky enough to survive the initial detonation. Burnings and radiation sickness aplenty is on screen. Public services are all but gone. Society breaks down and humanity slowly starts to regress to a base level.
We're 25 years on from the initial (and one of the only) BBC showings of Threads now, and its still a particularly grim piece of television which has managed to keep its ability to shock. I was only seven years old in 1984, and too young to watch when it was first shown, despite me badgering my parents to watch what I'd seen being filmed a few months earlier. In those days of much less widely and freely available sources of media and information, I imagine it made quite an impact. Indeed, its unimaginable to think anything quite like this could be made in the modern era.
As an aside, watching all the places I knew (many of them arent around any more, at least not as they looked back then) on screen always gives me a hit of nostalgia. They even blew up Finningley. Its now better known as Robin Hood Airport, but when I was a kid, we'd go out there every year to see the massive air show they used to put on.
Watching this back to back with When The Wind Blows makes for a depressing, but enthralling evening.
http://i44.tinypic.com/2co0uit.jpg
I only got to see Threads some six years later, when we watched it at school as part of our GCSE coursework, and then again about ten years later. After talking about it the other day, I dug out my old DVD and rewatched it again.
A very brave piece of televison at the time, while its very dated in its look 25 years later, its still a really powerful and bleak 90 minutes. Theres a lot of very memorable scenes on show - even though years go by inbetween viewings, I still sit there and think 'this is the bit where....' and so on. Of course, the bombs dropping is only the beginning of the story, as the second half shows what happens to those unlucky enough to survive the initial detonation. Burnings and radiation sickness aplenty is on screen. Public services are all but gone. Society breaks down and humanity slowly starts to regress to a base level.
We're 25 years on from the initial (and one of the only) BBC showings of Threads now, and its still a particularly grim piece of television which has managed to keep its ability to shock. I was only seven years old in 1984, and too young to watch when it was first shown, despite me badgering my parents to watch what I'd seen being filmed a few months earlier. In those days of much less widely and freely available sources of media and information, I imagine it made quite an impact. Indeed, its unimaginable to think anything quite like this could be made in the modern era.
As an aside, watching all the places I knew (many of them arent around any more, at least not as they looked back then) on screen always gives me a hit of nostalgia. They even blew up Finningley. Its now better known as Robin Hood Airport, but when I was a kid, we'd go out there every year to see the massive air show they used to put on.
Watching this back to back with When The Wind Blows makes for a depressing, but enthralling evening.
http://i44.tinypic.com/2co0uit.jpg