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.

Director Mick Jackson shoots the piece as if filming an actual disaster, using a documentary-maker's dispassion that renders the grey, gruesome scenes unbearably compelling. The blend of personal tragedy and global catastrophe is deftly handled but it's the attention to detail and stunning breadth of the work which most impresses.

DID YOU KNOW?
	Mick Jackson later directed blockbusters including The Bodyguard (1992) and Volcano (1997).   Threads was originally preceded by a warning that "Some of the scenes that follow may distress you..."   Rita May, who plays Mrs Kemp, is currently starring as Jean in the BBC's northern sitcom, Early Doors.

Writer Barry Hines, best known for Kes, fashioned his script on evidence supplied by bodies as varied as the British Medical Association and the Home Office, with literally dozens of experts from varying fields - including Carl Sagan - consulted to guarantee authenticity. The cold exploration of such horrific events is frightening, from the awful build-up to war and the immediate impact of the bomb, to the viler, long-term consequences of a poisoned world.

This multi-Bafta-winning drama remains disturbingly relevant, providing a chilling and memorable reply to a question which in the nuclear age, no-one wants answered. 'What if...?'

Gavin Collinson