Threads

Threads (1985) is a British drama directed by Mick Jackson for the BBC — watch online on iFILM. Sheffield, ordinary life: a young couple announces a pregnancy, her parents worry about the wedding, his family watches the news. The news items are about Soviet and American forces edging toward confrontation over Iran. Then the bombs drop.

What follows is unlike any other nuclear-war film. Jackson and writer Barry Hines built it as a quasi-documentary: on-screen text notes death tolls and radiation levels while the camera tracks Ruth (Karen Megheny), the pregnant fiancée, through the hours, weeks and then years after impact. Society doesn't just collapse — it reverts, slowly and without drama, to something pre-industrial. The children born after know almost no language and almost no history.

When the BBC screened it in 1984, parliament asked for a private viewing. It remains the most unflinching account of nuclear war ever put on television. Stream Threads online on iFILM.