First viewed : 10 December 1983
I made a decision at the start of this blog not to cover films including TV movies but in the case of The Day After there was a discussion programme straight after it was broadcast and it doesn't make sense to cover that without some word on the film itself. The film concerned the after-effects of a nuclear war focussing on a small town in Kansas where the director of a university hospital played by Jason Robards tries to cope with aiding the survivors and gradually realises it's hopeless as he too succumbs to radiation sickness. It's bleak enough but still somewhat sanitised for the American TV audience especially compared to the British take on the same subject matter some nine months later.
ITV scored a coup by getting the Secretary of State for Defence, Michael Heseltine in for a debate on the issues raised immediately afterwards. It was getting quite late so I only watched the first few minutes. I do recall Heseltine and the CND representative ( it wasn't Kent ) getting bogged down in an argument over whether one of the characters had survived the explosion or not. It seemed quite surreal that the man in charge of our national security should let himself get embroiled in a debate better suited to Screen Test. Once that was sorted out and the well-worn pros and cons of unilateral vs multilateral disarmament started to receive their umpteenth airing, I went to bed.
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