Catch Up: 'Living Through the End'

Posted: 24th May 2025

Hi everyone,

As promised, I’m very pleased to be able to send you through the replay and a bumper collection of follow up material after the fascinating discussions we had during our ‘Living Through the End’ event, hosted by the wonderful people at DePaul Humanities Center.

It was a pleasure and an honour to spend 90 minutes in such good company, thinking about these three on-screen depictions of nuclear apocalypse from 4 decades ago. I’m sure you will have come away with many different thoughts and reflections on what we saw and talked about, as I did.

The links I’ve compiled here will, I hope, give you many ways to explore the topics raised in more detail and if you do have a bit of time to go deeper, I’m sure you will get a lot out of doing so. I’m also attaching copies of Allison and Min’s presentations if you’d like to revisit those.

Just before we jump in, I also just wanted to remind you about my forthcoming Film Club to be hosted through my Substack newsletter, Vicki Lesley is… Documental, which will be launching this summer, with curated seasons of films, online discussions and members-only chat threads. As a thank you for being part of Living Through the End, I’ll be offering a juicy special discount on membership to everyone who signs up via this link:

https://bit.ly/dhc-livingthrough 

You’ll be added as a free subscriber for now and when the film club launches, I’ll send you your discount code. And if you’re already subscribed just drop me an email at [email protected] and I’ll make sure you get the discount code too.

Looking forward to sharing more soon! OK, so without further ado, let’s get onto all the follow up goodies.

With warmest wishes and many thanks again,

Vicki

Producer & director, The Atom: A Love Affair

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REPLAY LINK

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkosM0XCBGM

SYNOPSES & TRAILERS

Testament is a 1983 American post-apocalyptic drama film co-produced and directed by Lynne Littman and written by John Sacret Young, based on 1981 short story by Carol Amen, “The Last Testament”. It was originally produced for public television but it received such high acclaim that Paramount picked it up for a limited theatrical release. It tells the story of the fictional community of Hameline, a very ordinary small suburban town near the San Francisco Bay Area in the aftermath of a major nuclear exchange across the United States. The bomb doesn’t actually strike Hamelin and the town suffers no physical damage from the bombs. but we see the residents forced to deal with the (literal) fallout, as well as gradual radiation poisoning and the drawn-out collapse of what’s left of the world outside. The star of the film, Jane Alexander was nominated in the Best Actress category at the Oscars for her performance.

Trailer:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyzHGSOJjeA

The Day After is a 1983 American TV movie written by Edward Hume and directed by Nicholas Meyer. The plot revolves around a fictional conflict between NATO and the Warsaw Pact over Germany that rapidly escalates into a full-scale nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union but the action concentrates on the residents of the city of Lawrence, Kansas and Kansas City, Missouri as well as on several family farms close to American missile silos. The cast features several household names including Steve Guttenberg, Jason Robards, and John Lithgow. More than 100 million people watched the film when it first aired on ABC in November 1983 which equated to a 62% share of the viewing audience. And in 2009 it came in at number 16 in a list of the top 100 highest rated TV broadcasts in US history.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOFsOA9VsBk

Threads is a 1984 British nuclear war TV film written by Barry Hines and produced and directed by Mick Jackson, which similarly to The Day After, centres on a nuclear exchange between the US and the Soviet Union. It depicts the effects of this on Britain and in particular on the northern city of Sheffield with the plot centring on the two families of a young couple who we see in the early part of the film planning a wedding and expecting their first child together. The film graphically shows the medical, economic, social and environmental consequences of nuclear war and was the first on screen depiction of a nuclear winter. It was nominated for seven BAFTA awards in 1985 and won in four categories including Best Single Drama. It’s been called the most disturbing movie ever made and the original transmission date became notorious in British broadcasting circles as the night the country didn’t sleep.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgT4Y30DkaA&t=8s

WHERE TO WATCH

I recommend the website JustWatch.com to find out exactly where each film is streaming in your country.

At time of writing, Testament is streaming for free on a few different places in the US, but in the UK you’ll have to pay to watch it on Apple or Amazon.

The Day After is available to watch free on Daily Motion and the Internet Archive

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x88sxqq 

https://archive.org/details/the-day-after-1983-full-original-1751-aspect-ratio 

Threads is still on the BBC iPlayer in the UK

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p02kgkkg/threads 

And it’s available from several different places, for free or with subscription, over in the US.

EXTRAS

Bonus content from 20th anniversary DVD release of Testament:

Testament at 20 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbqTLn5ovTU

Behind the scenes extras from 2018 remastered DVD released of Threads:

• Auditioning for the Apocalypse Threads(Remastered)/1984+Threads(Remastered)+BTSDestruction+Designer.mkv”>https://archive.org/details/1984-threads-remastered/1984Threads(Remastered)/1984+Threads(Remastered)+BTS+Destruction+Designer.mkv 
• Shooting the Annihilation Threads(Remastered)/1984+Threads(Remastered)+BTSStephen+Thrower+on+Threads.mkv”>https://archive.org/details/1984-threads-remastered/1984Threads(Remastered)/1984+Threads(Remastered)+BTS+Stephen+Thrower+on+Threads.mkv

Links to loads of other documentaries, news programmes, related films etc in my Threads bonus post published last year for the BBC’s 40th anniversary rerun.

https://vickilesley.substack.com/p/threads-bonus-post

Plus an additional BBC programme I came across after I’d written the post called Did You See, broadcast the same week featuring various well known names of the time discussing Threads here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWJjcJT-Fnc 

And if you’re in the UK, there’s a newly recorded interview the BBC did with director Mick Jackons for the 40th anniversary last year on the iPlayer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0023sxq/mick-jackson-remembers-threads 

ABC News Viewpoint special  The Nuclear Dilemma  panel discussion broadcast immediately following The Day After

https://archive.org/details/abc-news-viewpoint-the-day-after-wls-channel-7-complete-broadcast-11-20-1983

2018 interview with Ted Koppel, presenter of the Viewpoint special, looking back on The Day After

https://thebulletin.org/2018/12/an-interview-with-ted-koppel-on-the-meaning-of-the-day-after/

OTHER THINGS MENTIONED

WarGames (1983)

Trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQUsLAAZuhU

Silkwood (1983)

Trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNyrSR5JGh8

Special Bulletin (1983)

Watch on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDZQsVNZ3SE

A few blogs/articles about the film

https://ultimateclassicrock.com/special-bulletin-tv-movie/

https://wearecult.rocks/found-footage-101-special-bulletin-usa-1983

https://thetvolution.com/2018/08/special-bulletin-better-than-ever/

The Americans season 4 episode 9 The Day After’(2016)

The Wikipedia entry about the episode gives a good description of how the 1983 TV movie is woven into the broader story, as well as quotes from several reviews mentioning the episode’s use of The Day After https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_After_(The_Americans)

2023 book  Apocalypse Television: How The Day After Helped End the Cold War (David Craig) https://www.amazon.com/Apocalypse-Television-After-Helped-Cold/dp/1493079174

2024 book - Nuclear War: A Scenario (Annie Jacobsen) https://www.amazon.com/Nuclear-War-Scenario-Annie-Jacobsen/dp/0593476093

Jacques Derrida 1984 lecture on nuclear war & the destruction of the archive - No Apocalypse, Not Now (Full Speed Ahead, Seven Missiles, Seven Missives) https://www.jstor.org/stable/464756