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Surviving Threads: Why Are People Drawn to the World's Most Harrowing Film?

Threads mega fan Jude Rogers asks why such a positive community has sprung up around what is probably the world's most harrowing film

He used synthesisers commercially available in 1984 as a starting point, even though usually when he makes music, he is concerned with fighting against nostalgia: “I want to connect with the energy of my youth differently, to reframe stuff from my past in a more fantastic way.” His work on the documentary supports the sound design of my producer Leonie Thomas, who used audio archive from the film itself, and many of the programmes made in response to it, as well as new interviews and my script. In his recent book, Everything Must Go, an extensive survey of apocalyptic narratives in pop culture, Dorian Lynskey explores how end-of-the-world stories have persisted across decades, centuries, and millennia even; but agrees that the shadow of a mushroom cloud gives these specific tales an explosive urgency. Everyday objects in Threads also linger long in my mind: Jimmy’s bird book – a nice nod to Barry Hines’ past as the author of Kes – which Ruth carries around like a totem; Michael’s early handheld electronic game, which his father cradles in the absence of his youngest child who is now dead; the milk bottles melting on the step, an incredible call back to Alison Kemp sipping on a drink just weeks earlier while studying French homework, pausing a Walkman in order to listen to a TV news bulletin.

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