Threads

Young Ruth Beckett and her fiancé, Jimmy, are setting up home together in Sheffield while expecting their first child. Meanwhile, tensions in the Middle East are increasing and when America intervenes in Iran the British authorities issue futile pleas for calm around the country. The trouble escalates into nuclear war and the world is devastated, transmuted into a broken, barren, nightmarish landscape where everything humanity relies upon, from sunlight to food supplies, can no longer be taken for granted. This becomes Ruth's story, but also a broader, fly-on-the-wall glimpse into a post-nuclear war future. Docu-drama's depiction of a nuclear onslaught. (Gavin Collinson)