That would be 'The War Games'. It also has the honour of being just about the only BBC programme ever which has a specific endcap slide with 'A BBC PRODUCTION' on it.I'm looking for it too now. What was the name of another drama from the late 60's with a similar theme that wasn't shown, I think until 1987?
Yep, as good as the modern docudramas are, they would doubtless be too concerned with making fake Sky News footage and using impressive pyrotechnics rather than portraying a gripping situation.I was thinking though - ever so 80s as it is, I reckon nowadays if it were remade it would be ... well .. too well-done. Along the lines of Smallpox 2002 and The Day Britain Stopped. Far too "realistic?", post-produced ...
Threads didn't have any of that - only TV footage was a brief shot of the mechanical globe spinning it's way around along with a clip of the period BBC News titles which contained a single mocked up report (itself just a newsreader and an 'outside downing street' shot which could have been taken from anywhere). Special effects were minimal - the nuclear explosion footage was old government test footage and the light flash was achieved by overexposing the camera to make the picture go bright. What it did have however, was brilliant writing and top-notch research that still makes it terrifying today, and I can't even think what it would have been like to watch it at the time.
That was early-80's Words and Pictures. For me, that is the single biggest most disturbing part of the film. That title sequence and theme tune was still in use when I first started primary school. One of my earliest memories is watching Words and Pictures in the reception class at school. Seeing them watching a programme which I have watched myself (I may even have seen that particular episode) was particularly disturbing.about five kids at a school watching this dodgy old video tape about something.
