Till then, please do settle in to enjoy my overview and thoughts on what proved to be a smart charity shop purchase of mine some years back - not just for the illuminating contents, but because it seems this book is rather a rare beast.

The only copy I could find available to purchase online is currently going for an eye-watering £180 on Oxfam Books! Abebooks, Amazon & Ebay all drew a blank (though you can buy a hoodie with the cover printed on if that appeals!)

I found this an incredibly interesting read and enjoyed learning more about the woman who wrote it and the Penguin series it’s a part of, as well as brushing up on the basics of atoms, ions and radioactivity and getting a first hand look at atomic issues from the distinct perspective of the mid-1960s, when both nuclear fallout and casual sexism were rife!

Here are a few links I mention in the video:

• Penguin Specials – because we’ve been here before on so many contemporary issues - this blog post highlights a host of other titles in the Penguin Specials series (and their eye-catching covers) and gives a great sense of the depth, breadth and serious-minded approach that underlay it

• Margot Bennett (writer) - her Wikipedia entry if you’d like to find out more about her eventful & varied career (this footnote in particular is well worth a click - it takes you straight to the Google Books upload of a 1993 cultural history book on 18th to 20th century images of gender in science & medicine whose Afterword discusses The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Atomic Radiation)

• The Long Way Back (1954) - Bennett’s sci-fi novel about African colonisation of Britain in a far future after a nuclear holocaust wiped out most of humanity

• Ninki by Margaret - a highly recommended Substack with art, culture and memoir written by Bennett’s namesake. By chance her latest post is (partly) about one of my all time favourite documentary series)

If you enjoy this I’d so appreciate if you could take a moment to tap the like button - or even better drop me a comment with any thoughts or observations of your own. It really helps other people find my work. Thanks!

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Want to expand your film diet beyond the endless Netflix scroll or latest multiplex blockbusters? Why not consider joining my online film club, The Film Thread, where we slowly explore our way round a single topic across several films over a number of months. It’s one hundred percent hand-curated and algorithm-free. I’d love to invite you in.

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Hi gang,

Happy equinox! Did you notice it? Or maybe even celebrate it?

I’ve found myself tuning in more and more to the changing seasons, ever since I started regularly exploring the small patch of hillside woodland behind my house during the first Covid lockdown in 2020. Its paths and slopes have become as familiar to me as my own back garden and seeing the foliage bloom and fade across the year has become a reassuring ritual that anchors me in time.

Just now, there’s a visible shift from abundant greens to more muted browns. The blackberries in the hedgerows are a clear sign September is here.1 And then there are the spectacular September sunsets. Here’s a photo of one we were treated to during dinner last week (the view from our kitchen isn’t too shabby).

Meanwhile, there’s another anchor that tells me autumn has arrived - the TV schedules. Terrestrial broadcasters and streamers alike are wheeling out their big guns for us to cozy up and settle down to watch, as the darker nights draw in. Strictly is back! ITV have got their big phone hacking drama, there’s a new Sally Wainwright series on the BBC and Channel 5 are rebooting The Forsyte Saga. New seasons of Slow Horses and The Morning Show have dropped on Apple TV. There’s a lot to come....but all that’s for a future roundup.

Right now, we’re looking back. To quote an unsourced phrase I saw floating around on the internet:

“September tries its best to have us forget summer.”

But in this roundup, I’m going to be doing my best to remember - and sharing with you some of the books, Substack posts, TV, film, podcasts and radio that have kept me company through August and September. I’d love to know if any of these have been on your cultural radar too. The comments are always open. And recommendations always welcome too. OK then, strap in, it’s a bumper one!

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Reading

Aside from a week on the Isle of Wight, when I had the blissful gift of uninterrupted time to escape into books, this was a scattergun summer for me, with a stressful and unexpectedly prolonged period of building work turning life upside down. Books were boxed up, bagged up and generally piled in strange places. Yet reading did somehow still get done.

I absolutely devoured So Good To See You, a delicious novel by (writing on Substack at ) about a group of Oxford graduates just a bit younger than me and my own merry band of Cambridge friends, who drift apart and reunite years later, deftly touching on class, privilege, ambition and shifting friendships.

I also got to the end of the fourth installment in Malorie Blackman’s Noughts & Crosses series, Double Cross. I have to say this wasn’t my favourite in the series. It took a minor character from the previous books and focused on him as the main figure in a gangland story that simply didn’t grip me nearly as much as the personal and emotional travails of living in the series’ deeply race-divided world that had dominated the earlier books.

But I’ve just started the fifth - and penultimate - book, which takes a big time jump and discovered that this character has gone in an intriguing direction which I think may make his story richer and more interesting in retrospect. I shall report back. And if there are any Noughts & Crosses fans out there, tell me, what do you make of Tobey Durbridge?

I’ve almost finished what writer calls her Self-Help-Comedy-Memoir, The Mental Load Diaries. She has a really earthy and honest style of writing and I’ve found it reassuring to recognise so many of the familiar ‘mental load’ challenges that I, like all women (cos let’s face it, it still mainly is women), deal with on the daily, as well as eye-opening seeing how much extra Cat was piling on herself, through a combination of perfectionism and undiagnosed ADHD. Her writing about the power of therapy is worth the price of admission alone.

I’m still slowly savouring Breaking the Waves by about how women around the world, and Emma herself, have found solace in the open water; each chapter and each woman’s story feels like it needs time to land and teach its lessons. And on a not-unrelated note, I’ve been enjoying going on a journey into the healing power of sauna culture with in his new memoir Blowing Hot & Cold, which he’s currently serialising on Substack (start here).

Elsewhere on Substack, I’ve been drawn to pieces on simplicity and childhood pleasures. I particularly enjoyed on finding more time (behind a paywall now I think but do check out Layla’s publication ), on reclaiming your energy and on the perennial parenting challenge of decluttering toys (something that also came up in the book Simplicity Parenting mentioned in my last live roundup).

Meanwhile, took me on a delightful nostalgia trip to Emily’s shop of lost and found things in his piece on Oliver Postgate’s stop-motion childrens’ masterpiece Bagpuss, while inspired me to take a closer look at one of my daughter’s favourite TV animations in her piece on the architectural interiors on Apple TV’s Shape Island (there’s also a post on the architecture of Bluey - dreamy!)

And I had a chuckle at this post from (top name!) proving that some things just don’t change. Their list of the top primary school experiences could have been lifted from my 1980s infant & junior schooldays equally as well as my youngest’s school today (the delulus are in their 20s so their own primary schooldays were presumably right between the two). Novelty rubbers anyone?

Watching

This is where things all go a bit Antipodean, albeit not in any kind of planned way. That said, it wasn’t all Australia by any means.

I watched not just one but two bodyswap movies starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Lyndsay Lohan. Freakier Friday was the only thing on at the cinema for the 5 year old and me when she had an inset day on the first day of school and then she really wanted to see the 2003 original Freaky Friday too. I’m not honestly sure she fully understood the concept, but there’s no doubting both stars were bringing it with the physical humour, especially in the sequel, which doesn’t really hang together as an overall film but does have some EXTREMELY funny moments.

On holiday we watched a so-bad-it-was-almost-good ‘90s action-disaster movie, Hard Rain, which had such a stellar cast (Morgan Freeman, Christan Slater, Randy Quaid, Minnie Driver) I couldn’t believe I’d never heard of it - until we watched it! And I grooved away a smooth 90 minutes or so in the company of Michael Mcdonald, Kenny Loggins and Christopher Cross in the straightforwardly-assembled but musically delectable Yacht Rock: A Documentary.

These aside, I spent a lot of my screen time Down Under.

Long time readers may be aware of my deep and abiding love for the titan of soap operas that is Neighbours. What with holiday travel, builder disruption and the start of term, I fell almost a month behind - I was missing the unmissable drama!2 So obviously a marathon binge watch was called for. You’ll be glad to know I’m now all caught up.

Then there were new series of Fisk and The News Reader to relish. The performances from both leads, Anna Torv and Sam Reid, in The Newsreader were nothing short of astonishing and I continued to be wowed by how the writers wove the characters’ stories into real news events of the 1980s. It didn’t quite nail the landing for me - I found the ending a bit pat and rushed if I’m honest - but it didn’t diminish from the overall sense of achievement and I was sad to learn that no further seasons are planned

As for Fisk, well, if you don’t know it, boy, have you got a treat in store. Here’s a wee taster:

Lastly, I flexed the BFI Player subscription (a Christmas gift for my partner that was at least as much for me - sorry Dave 😄) with two excellent Australian indie films, one live action and one animation.

Many of you may have seen Memoir of a Snail, which was nominated for Best Animated Feature at last year’s Oscars. It had been on my watch list for ages and didn’t disappoint with its beautifully-rendered claymation universe of grief, love, separation, trauma and abuse, interspersed with rare moments of pure joy and one of the best intergenerational female friendships I can remember seeing on screen (Jacki Weaver as the elderly eccentric Pinky was a true stand out).

And a film I didn’t know at all but was drawn to by the trailer was blacker-than-black Aussie comedy Audrey, which now I come to think of it has its own off-the-wall echoes of Freaky Friday with a middle aged mother taking on the identity of her teenage daughter, but in a very different way from the Hollywood blockbuster. Definitely worth checking out if you like your humour toe-curling and unsparing.

Listening

Finally a podcast recommendation and some recent radio drama picks for you.

The Problematic Gaze is a relative newcomer to my podcast rotation but it’s swiftly become a firm favourite. The two (gay) hosts - yep for extra points the title is a glorious pun - Dave Moor and Dr Lee Arnott dissect slices of film, TV and pop culture from the past 50 years to assess if they seem problematic today and if so, what that says about then and about now.

As a nuclear geek, I feel duty bound to direct you to their episodes on Threads and, recently, The War Game, but I’ve also loved listening to them discuss everything from Bullseye and Blind Date to Secret Diary of a Call Girl, Reservoir Dogs, and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, plus many more.

I’ve also been listening to a fair bit of audio drama on Radio 4 this summer. The range of styles and subjects is second to none and when I can’t sleep or just need to switch off completely from whatever’s going on in my day, there’s often nothing better than an absorbing radio play. Here are three recent titles I’ve enjoyed all of which which you can find in Radio 4’s Drama on 4 strand:

Red Gold, a meticulously fact-based drama about the infected blood scandal, the exhausting, decades-long fight for compensation and the impact on those affected.

Collapsing Orbits, a two parter about a Musk-style tech billionaire obsessed with starting a new society on Mars that didn’t at all go where I expected.

When I Fall, a sweet but unsentimental tale of disability and queer dating from , also of this parish (you can find more of his great work on his Substack ).

And that’s your lot. Plenty of goodies to choose from there I hope. So now it’s over to you.

• Is there’s something I’ve mentioned that you feel drawn to go and seek out?

• Do you strongly disagree or agree with any of my takes?

• Have you ever heard of Hard Rain?!

It’s genuinely always a pleasure to get your responses, be that in the comments or in my email replies, so don’t be shy. And as always, if you can take a moment to hit the ❤️ it’ll help more people find my words.

Till the next time, may all your reading, watching & listening be good.

Vicki x

PS If ‘Here Come the Aussies’ makes you think of cricket (looking at you ) and more specifically the rapidly approaching showdown of this winter’s Ashes series, I’m sure you’ll thank me for sharing this little gem. Just don’t come after me if it gets stuck in your head for the rest of the day..!

Watch my film on Netflix & Disney+ (UK/Europe only) or Vimeo-on-demand - or see trailer, reviews & bonus content HERE

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Please take care listening as these testimonies feature graphic and extremely distressing descriptions. But the first-hand memories are vital for the world to hear - and even more so as the events recede further and further into history.

The survivors’ appeals - that nuclear weapons must be abolished and no nuclear strike ever allowed to happen again - can not, must not be ignored.

If you missed the interview with Yuki, you can read it here:

I was also very interested to come across this piece by which includes the very photo taken on Miyuki Bridge by Yoshito Matsushige, one of the survivors whose testimonies I’ve read out here.

Old Photos of Japan

Rare Photos of the Hiroshima Atomic Bombing

Old Photos of Japan is a community effort to preserve and share the visual heritage of daily life in Japan between the 1850s and 1960s. The project acquires, conserves, and researches original vintage images. Articles are freely accessible…

Read more

8 months ago · 24 likes · 2 comments · Kjeld Duits

In my ignorance, I hadn’t realised quite how significant the photo Matsushige describes taking is and I’d highly recommend taking a look at the full piece, which goes into a lot more detail on this photo as well as many other rare and important images.

Mentioned in this video:

• and the ITV Tour de France coverage

• BBC Sounds Whodunnits / A Charles Paris Mystery: A Deadly Habit

• Best Old Movies for Families: A Guide to Watching Together - Ty Burr

• Simplicity Parenting - Kim John Payne

• The Fear Index - Robert Harris

• Happy Baby, Happy Family - Sarah Beeson &

• My Policeman - Bethan Roberts

• Checkmate - Malorie Blackman

• Attack on London: Hunting the 7/7 Bombers (Netflix)

• The Handmaid’s Tale (Hulu/Channel 4)

• Smoke (Apple TV+)

• Here We Go (BBC iPlayer)

• The Ballad of Wallis Island (and the original 20007 short film The One and Only Herb McGwyer Plays Wallis Island)

And as promised, here’s tiny Tim Wellens, the Belgian road race champion, as sculpted by my son.

As always, do let me know if you’ve watched or read any of the above and if so what you made of them.

And I’d also love to know what you think of this video format for my content round-ups. Do you like it? I found going live a lot easier this time than my first attempt so if watching/listening feels good for this stuff I could mix it up and do at least some of them this way rather than always writing. All feedback greatly appreciated as aways - and hitting the ❤️ will give my ego a boost too!

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PS It’s worth staying right to the veeeeeeeeeeery end for a little surprise 😄

You can get it from Bookshop in the UK here, and in the US here. And if you’re based elsewhere, as always the internet is your ally 😊 Here’s the publishers’ blurb:

Tracing uranium's past, and how it intersects with our understanding of other radioactive elements, this book aims to disentangle our attitudes and to unpick the atomic mindset.

Chain Reactions looks at the fascinating, often-forgotten, stories that can be found throughout the history of the element. Ranging from glassworks to penny stocks; medicines to weapons; something to be feared to a powerful source of energy, this global history not only explores the development of our scientific understanding of uranium, but also shines a light on its cultural and social impact.

By understanding our nuclear past, we can move beyond the ideological opposition to atomic technology and encourage a more nuanced dialogue about whether it is feasible - and desirable - to have a genuinely nuclear-powered future.

A couple of quick show notes.

I talked a bit about the Linear No-Threshold model for assessing cancer risk from radiation exposure, which forms the widely accepted basis for radiation protection in almost all countries around the world. But I forgot to mention that it hit the headlines again recently when the Trump administration issued several executive orders relating to the nuclear industry, including one directing the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission to ‘reconsider’ its use of the model. You can read more on that here: To boost nuclear power, Trump orders controversial rewrite of radiation safety rules

And I’m afraid I suffered an embarrassing menopausal brain freeze over the title of Richard Rhodes’ classic tome on the American nuclear weapons programme. It is of course The Making of The Atomic Bomb.

Lastly, if you’re interested in Lucy Jane Santos’ earlier book on radium that one is called Half Lives: The Unlikely History of Radium.

I’m still finding my feet doing videos like this so if you enjoy this one, you can really give my confidence a boost by letting me know you liked it - by clicking the ❤️ or commenting or replying if you’re getting this over email.

It feels like a mere moment ago I was compiling my list of cultural goodies for my last round-up - and yet somehow here we are, practically bumping into the end of June. That old adage about stopping to smell the roses feels more pertinent with every year older I get. And I have in fact been doing it more and more (though not strictly always with roses) - taking a tiny pause out of life and arresting time, even just for a second

Nature definitely provides its own show for us this time of year. As I sit down to start writing this, it's solstice weekend and I'm looking out my office window at the sloping bank that leads up into our garden, where the long prairie grasses and rangy oxeye daisies are dancing wildly in the breeze in the midsummer warmth.

But human-made entertainment remains in full force too. In an hour or two, I'll be heading off to the station to take a train up to London to meet my mum for a late Christmas present theatre trip to watch two of the stars of Strictly Come Dancing strutting their stuff on stage (rather them than me in this heat!) And of course there’s just as much of a deluge of possible films, TV shows, podcasts et al for us to consume this time of year as any other.

So this round-up is, as ever, just my little offering of some things you might choose to feed your eyes and ears with, out of what can often feel like an infinite pool of possibilities.

This is what I’ve found memorable and interesting over the past few weeks. If you've read, watched or listened to any of these yourself, I'd love to know what you thought of them. And as ever, if you've got any brilliant recommendations you want to send my way, I would be delighted to receive them.

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Reading

I've had a lot of balls in the air these past few weeks getting ready for the launch of' ‘The Film Thread’ - my brand new members’ film club which is just about to go live as a fun offshoot to this very newsletter.

Despite living in a lark's world, in which I’m obliged to be up early every day to get the kids off to school, I'm naturally a night owl and I tend to do my best thinking and writing late in the evening. What this has meant recently is that my pre-bedtime book reading has been replaced by tapping away furiously on the laptop keys until past midnight most nights.

That said, it’s really only in the most extreme of situations that life throws up that I ever lay down my books completely. So whilst my reading has slowed, it certainly hasn’t stopped.

I zipped through a new popular history of uranium, Chain Reactions, by freelance historian Lucy Jane Santos, which I’ll be posting a video book report on soon. I finished Meditations for Mortals (recommended, especially read spaced out over 30 days as author suggests) and Murder at the Vicarage (Agatha kept me guessing until almost the very end!) and I’m nearing completion of the third of six books in Malorie Blackman’s Noughts & Crosses series, which I’m reading slowly across the whole of 2025.

And I’ve got two books currently on the go, both contributing to the sub-heading of this round-up and both an absolute DELIGHT.

In the wildlife category, as predicted, I am completely swept away by Chloe Dalton’s tale of the newborn wild leveret she rescued and took into her home, in Raising Hare. The precision and care in her descriptions of this initially-tiny, but fast-growing and ever-changing creature - and her broader exploration of the hare’s place in history, folklore and culture - are honestly just beguiling.

As for words, well obviously all books by definition involve words but my other current read, Rosen’s Almanac by the utter legend that is Michael Rosen, is actually about them.

I’ve adored Michael Rosen since I was a kid and was thrilled to meet him and have him sign one of my original 1980s poetry books of his after a children’s book event at Brighton Festival a couple of years ago (I think I was even more excited by seeing him than my son was!) I’ve got this one out of the library but as the title suggests it’s set out as a long series of shorter, discrete pieces, for each day of the calendar, so I’m quite tempted to treat myself to my own copy. I think it might just be the perfect downstairs loo book 🤣

Seriously though, if you’re at all interested in the wonders and weirdnesses of the English language (or if you ever listen to Rosen’s Radio 4 series Word of Mouth) I think you’ll love this book.1

Meanwhile on Substack, I very much enjoyed two windows into very different styles of English abodes in the shape of a fascinating look at the country's last cave homes by and a deep dive into the Churchill Gardens estate in Westminster, widely considered a gem of British postwar council housing and of particular interest to me since my dad grew up on the nearby Abbots Manor estate and attended Churchill Gardens primary school in the early 1960s.2

With Glastonbury rolling around again this weekend, I loved going on a tour of 20 years of festival-going with one of my favourite writers on the platform, the wonderful (who absolutely rocked the space age glamour look in fancy dress as Lieutenant Gay Ellis from UFO in 2011 - yes, there's a picture😄). And I urge you to spend a few minutes with 80-year old Raymond, a 'Bay Area style icon' who's been keeping a daily journal for 57 years. Just brilliant stuff.

On a more sombre note, I've been paying renewed attention to the writers I follow on nuclear weapons issues in light of the deeply scary situation currently playing out between Iran and Israel. One voice I've found myself turning to is that of , a former US Air Force/Department of Defense expert in counter-WMD policy and nuclear deterrence.

I recommend checking out his Substack in general, but will flag up in particular this piece on a board game entitled Target: Iran, that puts a whole other spin on the war gaming thread that's ended up wending its way through my viewing and listening elsewhere of late. It's a sideways take on the current situation that I think is well worth reading.

And finally, if you care about films and film culture, I'd strongly encourage you to find some time to sit down and read the rallying three-part series on how to save movie-going from at , The death of cinema & how to bring it back to life'.

After digging into the sorry state of theatrical cinema and what might lie behind it in the first two parts in the series, in the third part she brings the mood back up by introducing her 'cultural gym' framework. This really resonated with me, landing just as I was myself engaged in thinking about how I could inculcate some semblance of the natural communion that comes from watching films with other people in a cinema, only virtually. Sophie's words express the magic of this shared experience just beautifully:

Cinema, at its best, isn't a content delivery system but a synchronizer of human experience. When a room full of strangers laugh or cry or hold their breath together, something ancient and powerful happens—a reminder that we're not just isolated consciousness in separate flesh prisons but creatures capable of feeling in unison.

This synchronization of experience feels increasingly rare and precious.

I couldn’t agree more.

Watching

Sadly, I’ve not made it to the cinema myself this month but I have been doing a far bit of communal telly-watching. We’ve been catching up on a couple of BBC sitcoms that previously passed me by: the fairly traditional broad humour of family misadventures with a top-notch cast including Katherine Parkinson, Alison Steadman and writer Tom Basden in Here We Go (which my 11 year old especially enjoyed - a lot of it is marvellously silly); and Such Brave Girls, a much darker, female-led vehicle for writer Kat Sadler and her sister Lizzie Davidson about trauma, narcissism and very poor life choices against a backdrop of poverty in contemporary Britain.

The kids and I also enjoyed some natural history, the picks of the bunch being a beautifully relaxing and eye-opening programme on The Magical World of Moss and - more wildlife - Pangolins: The World's Most Wanted Animals (both on the iPlayer).

Also possibly sneaking into the wildlife category as a wildcard - the 2007 Jerry Seinfeld animation Bee Movie, which managed to get across a vital message about the crucial importance of pollinators for the world, whilst also being a lot funnier than I’d expected (your mileage on honey-based puns may vary 🤣).

And we watched Tales from Earthsea, which was as gorgeously-realised as every Studio Ghibli film but having read the entire book series last year, I felt disappointed by how Ursula K. Le Guin's masterful source material had been mangled and conflated into a rather reductive, cliched tale of good vs evil. This is one case where I'd definitely say choose the books over the film.

A lot of my movie-watching over the past month or so has coalesced around titles from or about the ‘60s & ‘70s - not a deliberate theme although I do often find I end up subconsciously selecting titles that have something in common - do you do that too?

The film that kicked off this unintended 'mini-season' was The Phantom of the Open, the absolutely wild true story of a Cumbrian crane-operator who, despite having never played golf before in his life, became a brief sensation after managing to gain entry to play at the 1976 British Open and then getting the worst ever score in the tournament's history. Featuring an incredibly committed turn from Mark Rylance, as well as disco dancing twins, Japanese businessmen and some fantastic ‘70s outfits, this was a really warm bit of escapism.

I then watched Joy: The Birth of IVF, another British true-life tale, this time of the pioneering scientific efforts behind the first test-tube baby Louise Brown. This was a fairly standard, ‘triumph-against-the-odds’ movie in its mode of storytelling, but the focus on the women at the heart of the story - not just the hopeful mums-to-be but the female embryologist Jean Purdy, whose contribution has too often been overlooked - was really moving and felt so close to home for me, having been born just a year before Louise Brown. The parents in the film could so easily have been my parents or those of my friends. There but for the grace of god etc. And Bill Nighy was wonderful - as he always is.

Continuing my recent vogue for Agatha Christie, I also watched the original 1974 Murder on the Orient Express with Albert Finney - extraordinary cast, but I did find it a bit stagey - and The Killing of Sister George, starring Beryl Reid and Susannah York. To me Beryl Reid was one of those twinkly, 'grand dame' fixtures of my childhood alongside Thora Hird and Dora Bryan, but in this film she was very far from that image, playing an ageing lesbian actress and star of a popular TV soap opera whose character is being written out against her will (the storyline said to be inspired by the killing off of Grace Archer in the BBC's long-running radio soap The Archers).

The film was controversial in its day for its frank depiction of a gay relationship (which was really incidental to the main plot of the soap opera sacking) and I did find it an engaging watch, especially the scenes in a lesbian night club which were presented in such a normalised and surprisingly modern fashion for a film made in the '60s. It could have been about half an hour shorter though.

Lastly, I complemented all the mid-century Britishness with... a mid-century French film. Mon Oncle, from 1958, was my first experience of Jacques Tati and I found it fun and charming - especially the main couple’s modernist house with its clearly-intended-to-be-ridiculous mod cons which I actually found quite desirable 😄. Great soundtrack too. I’ve lined up what by all accounts is his masterpiece, Playtime, to watch next.

And finally we get to the aforementioned war gaming. Inspired by a podcast listen, which I'll talk about in a moment, I decided to sit down and watch the 2024 American feature documentary, simply entitled War Game, which features an array of retired US veterans, government and intelligence officials and elected representatives role-playing an attempted coup scenario in which right wing extremists and rogue members of the miltary try to prevent the certification of a presidential election.

I found it a gripping but queasy watch, borrowing tropes from heist and spy thrillers (there was a 6 hour clock counting down throughout the exercise), whilst also making clear the human vulnerability and uncertainty at play in a situation that feels unsettlingly possible, all made so much worse by the disinformation flooding the zone.

Listening

But for me as a Brit, it was the Wargame podcast, a joint production by Sky News and Tortoise Media, the new owners of the Observer newspaper, that had the bigger impact.

This 5 part series similarly features a 'cast' of top level government officials and advisors (played by some genuine big hitters of British politics including former foreign, home & defence secretaries Jack Straw, Amber Rudd and Ben Wallace, the latter playing the Prime Minister) role-playing a scenario in which Russia attacks the UK and the US and NATO decline to provide any military support, ultimately leading to a horrifying choice as to whether to deploy Britain's nuclear weapons deterrent.

It's very well put together and makes for truly compelling listening, not least as you really feel like you're getting a behind-the-curtain glimpse of what the conversations of those in power must be like in moments of high level national emergency (the calm and understated tones of the British upper classes - which is what most of these people appear to be, especially on the military side - belying the almost unimaginable consequences being discussed).

But there is also a clear political agenda - that Britain is not, and has not been, spending nearly enough on its defence - which is presented as simply inarguable. The timing of the series, coinciding with the British government's recent spending review announcing increased military spending, surely can't be coincidental. If you want to hear some counter-arguments to the need for more fighter jets, war ships and nuclear submarines, this piece in the London Review of Books is well worth a read: Ready for war?

Finally, I have to share this new collection of poetry by the wonderful writer & storyteller John Osborne, who’s probably most famous for his 2011 show John Peel’s Shed. Like all his work, To Make People Happy is just shot through with warmth, humour and nostalgia and the audio version, linked below, also includes his little voice notes on the genesis and background to many of the pieces. The poem ‘I’d love to die in my own house’ made me cry a little bit - in a good way.

A SHORT FILM TO WATCH

And just before I go, as always I’m sharing a short film you can watch in just a few minutes. This documentary is about one of those slightly oddball, forgotten moments of popular culture - in this case a dispute over the Guinness World Records for the fastest talker that played out on American television in the late 1980s. In just 11 minutes it opens up a whole world you almost certainly didn’t know about and the central character draws you into his experience and memories completely. I’d love to know what you think.

And I’ll make no comment on why a film about someone who talks really quickly should have jumped out at me as one to watch…!

This has been a typically long round-up so thanks for bearing with me till the end. I hope you’ll find something in here that grabs your fancy - and don’t be shy with any thoughts and observations as it’s always great to hear what you think.

Leave a comment

Till the next time then, stay curious, keep calm and carry on.

Love,

Vicki x

PS if you liked this, do give it a little ❤️ on the button below - it helps other people find my stuff.

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(to quote my favourite presenter of Through the Keyhole1).

I'm back in your inboxes to share some of my favourite cultural goodies I've been partaking in over the past month and a bit. I'd love to know if you've read, watched or listened to any of these and if so, what you made of them.

And if there's something great you've been enjoying, I'm always in the market for a good recommendation (in fact the next book I've got lined up on my library app - a wildlife memoir written by Chloe Dalton called Raising Hare - is one I felt I just must get on order after reading a glowing review by over at ).

If you're reading in email you can just reply straight to this message. And/or don't be shy about hitting the comment button. Sharing is caring as they say!😊

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So without further preamble, let’s crack on with my picks since my last round-up. You can read that one here if you missed it:

Reading

Book-wise, this was a fiction-heavy month, perhaps an unconscious rebalance after tilting more in the non-fiction direction through March and April.

The stand out title for me was a blackly comic short story collection by Eliza Clark, She's Always Hungry. I found it at once discomfiting and totally compelling in its exploration of all manor of dark human desires, roaming across genres from sci-fi and speculative fiction to grotesque body horror. I listened to the audio version which had a variety of differently-accented narrators, including Clark herself, deployed most memorably in one wild story consisting entirely of online reviews for a mysterious Chinese/Italian fusion takeaway called 'Little Chitaly'. Strong recommend for this one.

I also read Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, which my 11 year old had been given for Christmas and is one of those classic books I'd always wanted to read but somehow never had, so 'borrowed' - with his permission of course! And I finished Knife Edge, the second book in Malorie Blackman's Noughts & Crosses series, which is my year-long reading project for this year.2

I'm now a good way through the third book in the series, Checkmate. And I'm also deep into the first Miss Marple novel Murder at the Vicarage (no spoilers please!), inspired by finishing the Agatha Christie jigsaw I got for my birthday, which I posted about on Substack Notes...

And lastly I'm enjoying a dose of daily inspiration in the latest gem from , Meditations for Mortals.

On Substack, I was delighted/ fascinated to read two companion profiles by animation aficionado of a pair of names that punctuated my childhood TV cartoon diet, William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, co-creators of magical titles like Tom & Jerry, Huckleberry Hound, The Flintstones, Top Cat, Yogi Bear and many more. And I loved re-visiting one of my all-time favourite Mike Leigh films, Abigail’s Party (a 1995 amateur production of which was my last ever stage role as a teen actor - I played Angela3) with .

has launched a lovely collaborative series on artworks that have moved people and I very much enjoyed the latest installment focusing on an iPad painting by & encounter with David Hockney. took me on a deliciously droll tour of some of the other bunnies and hares of folklore who don’t get a look-in with all the fuss about the Easter Bunny. And my spirits were lifted by this ode to strangers (prompted by a dog whistling speech a couple of weeks ago by the British Prime Minister), encompassing a mission to preserve a radical social archive in Bradford, a city close to mine and my partner’s hearts, and neighbours coming together to protect migrants from an early morning immigration raid in Glasgow.

Watching

I can see from the scribbled list at the back of my diary that, without any particular intention of doing so, I've been choosing more fiction than non-fiction on screen lately too. That said, I did watch a couple of excellent feature docs, both released last year, that I would definitely recommend:

• Victor Kossakovsky's intriguing and visually stunning essay film on the evolving story of building in concrete and stone, Architecton (which also inspired me to re-post my piece on the iconic 1980s meditation on civilisation, Koyaanisqatsi), and

• Black Snow, a revelatory observational doc following an extraordinarily brave Siberian housewife-turned-citizen-journalist, who risks her own and her family's safety by going into battle against a Russian state determined to cover up dangerous toxic pollution caused by an abandoned mine in her home town.

And I finally got around to watching a docudrama series on the iPlayer4 I'd had lined up for a while - Secrets & Spies: A Nuclear Game, telling the true story of two double agents on either side of the Iron Curtain at the height of the Cold War in the 1980s.

This lived up to its billing as a thriller as nail-biting as any spy novel. There was some impressive archive, including contemporary interviews with the spies themselves and former aides to Thatcher and Reagan, plus new interviews with members of the Soviet, British & American intelligence services, some speaking publicly for the first time. And though my tolerance for drama reconstruction has been tested by years of developing true crime shows heavily relying on it, this was a pretty good example of its use, supporting but not overwhelming the factual material.

On the fiction side, I'd just finished Secrets and Spies when I got a reminder that Armando Ianucci's The Death of Stalin was leaving Netflix soon. I took this as a sign I should go back and watch this darkest of dark comedies about the chaos and backstabbing that followed the Soviet leader's demise in 1953.

And then, just to complete my own loose Soviet trilogy, I decided to watch Red Joan, a Judy Dench vehicle about Britain's longest-serving KGB spy. Except it turned out Judy Dench was hardly in the film at all, with most of it occurring in flashback to her earlier years as a young woman in the ‘50s. I can't in all honesty give this a glowing two thumbs up, as most of it was fairly forgettable, paint-by-numbers, period drama fare, despite the gripping nature of its source story. The few scenes with Dench and her adult son were excellent though, and the final scene was almost worth sitting through the rest of the movie for. Almost.

Elsewhere, the kids and I enjoyed two very different silent movies - some high-rise high jinks in 1928's Skyscraper (inspired by the discussion with on podcast) and the gorgeous, non-anthropomorphised animal adventure through a flooded world in this year's Oscar-winning animation, Flow. And I saw a darker side to Ol’ Blue Eyes in Frank Sinatra's unflinching, Oscar-nominated turn as a reformed junkie (the drug strongly implied to be heroin) who relapses after being released from prison in The Man with the Golden Arm, from 1955.

Finally, back on the small screen, I binge-watched Toxic Town, the Jodie Whittaker Netflix mini-series about the Corby toxic waste scandal (prompted in part by watching Black Snow). And my go-to light relief has been wallowing once a week in the absurd but hilarious shenanigans of Seth Rogen and his incredible ensemble cast in Apple TV's The Studio. Not every episode totally hit the mark but it was laugh-out-loud more than enough times to keep me happy through a period punctuated by several bouts of illness plus the stress of my 11 year old's SATS exams.

Listening

As an avid fan of bike racing, spring time is a golden time, from Paris Roubaix and the last of the Spring Classics in late April, to the Italian version of the Tour de France, the magnificent Giro d'Italia, that fills up three glorious weeks in May. And hence, much of my listening time of late has been given over to cycling content, in particular to the daily, whimsical travelogue updates from (aka Ned Boulting, who's in Italy commentating on the race) in Never Strays Far and the original and best, on-the-ground race coverage on .

Away from the skinny chaps in lycra, a couple of stand-out podcast episodes have shone a concerning light on the current media landscape and in particular on the increasing, overweening influence of celebrity on what's being made.

Around a decade ago, journalist Jane Marie was an editor at feminist website Jezebel when its parent company Gawker was brought down by a legal battle, bankrolled by tech billionaire Peter Thiel, over a sex tape it published made by the wrestler Hulk Hogan. In this episode of her podcast The Dream, she talks to the Gawker's then-editor about how it all went down and what's happened since.

And have you heard about the Prince documentary that will now never see the light of day? If not, it’s a 9 hour epic made over 5 years by Ezra Edelman, director of the similarly ambitious, Oscar-winning OJ: Made in America. Edelman was granted unprecedented access to the entire Prince archive by the bank administering the musician’s estate. But following the departure of the lead executive at Netflix and a change in management of the estate, the streamer has put Edelman's project permanently on ice, commissioning an entirely new, 'official' biopic in its place.

In this episode of Pablo Torres Finds Out, Edelman opens up about the whole sorry experience, the effect it’s had on him and what it says about the future of genuine independent documentary portraits of people in the public eye - as distinct from profiles made with/by the celebrities themselves (like the Netflix Beckham series and the recently-announced Amazon film about Melania Trump). It’s sobering stuff.

And in a similar vein, I found much food for thought - and not all of it hopeful - in a Substack Live conversation between from and journalist Taylor Lorenz, about what traditional documentary filmmakers can/should learn from online content creators. Here's the replay:

Lingo on Docs

Watch Taylor Lorenz on filmmaking in the age of the creator economy

Thank you to all who tuned into my live video with Taylor Lorenz! Here is the playback in case you want to watch now. We talked about the history of the creator economy, how filmmakers can take a page from influencers to grow their own careers, the difference between traditional success in media and online success, and so much more…

Listen now

a year ago · 31 likes · 2 comments · Kathleen Lingo and Taylor Lorenz

A Short Film to Watch

Finally, I've seen several great shorts these past few weeks and as usual I'm choosing one to recommend for you. Kirsten Lepore's Hi Stranger was a viral sensation back in 2019 but in typical behind-the-times fashion I only just stumbled across it.

If you saw it at the time, I'm sure you'll appreciate a revisit with its mesmerisingly-smooth, clay hero. And if, like me, you were blissfully unaware, just sit back and enjoy. And let me know - do you find him (it?) comforting, creepy… or creepily comforting?

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And that’s my round-up.

Till next we meet, I'll sign off with my own wish, echoing Hi Stranger’s, that wherever you are and whatever you're doing, everything's going to be OK.

With love,

Vicki x

And if you like it, why not subscribe to receive all the new posts in the series as I add them!

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A bit of an impromptu post this one, but over the weekend I saw two films - at the cinema with my kids and on our projector at home with my partner - that both in their own way made me think of this remarkable movie.

And so I’ve decided to re-post my piece on it from last year for anyone who didn’t catch it first time around.

The films were the sublime, Oscar-winning animation Flow by Latvian director Gints Zilbalodis. And Architecton, a hypnotic essay film by Russian documentarian Victor Kossosovsky, ruminating on the role of concrete and stone in architecture across centuries of history.

Both eschew words in favour of visual storytelling, underpinned by startling sound design and immersive scores. Flow is entirely non-verbal, while Architecton has just a few scenes involving human interaction interspersed in between its otherwise dazzling visual feast of cinematography and drone work. They’re both epic in scale. And both pose - though without ever really answering - profound, ecologically-tinged questions about the fragility of human civilisation1.

I LOVED Flow - it was up there with the best of Studio Ghibli for me, but with a style and register all of its own. And I found Architecton a genuinely stimulating cinematic experience, even if the central ideas might have been somewhat more developed and the ending was a little underwhelming.

I’d recommend them both. But for the ultimate in pulsating visuals, grand civilisational & planetary conundrums and meaning thrillingly resistant to interpretation, you still just can’t beat Godfrey Reggio’s 43 year old masterwork. And so I present to you, Koyaanisqatsi.

Note: This piece was first published on The Oscar Project as part of the Sept 2024 Movie Challenge by Jonathan Ytreberg. If you love movies, new or old, and you haven’t checked out his Substack and podcast yet, then you definitely should. It’s great 🤩

When Jonathan told me he was planning to include Koyaanisqatsi in his September movie challenge and asked if I'd like to collaborate on a post about it – since it also features on my own A-Z list of favourite documentary films – of course, I jumped at the chance. Whilst some purists might baulk at calling it a documentary, for me it definitely falls under any expansive definition of creative non-fiction filmmaking. In fact, it's one of the very best examples I can think of.

This is a film that takes three of the essential ingredients of cinema – image, sound and feeling – and then simply strips everything else away. With no plot and no characters, this avant-garde, experimental approach provides an unforgettable viewing experience, one felt in the senses, in the body and the gut, far more than in the mind.

In some ways, it almost feels like watching a concert film, except that the stars of the performance are nature and civilisation themselves. There are famously extended timelapse scenes where the sped up motion, edited in time with Philip Glass's pulsating, hypnotic score, makes it feel like we're watching formally choreographed dance sequences out of everything from the shadows of clouds passing across giant rock formations and commuters streaming up escalators, to factory production lines, and mailroom sorting machines.

Director Godfrey Reggio takes viewers from placid desert landscapes to urban sprawls, all without direct commentary other than the visuals and music.

These sequences are almost exhilarating to watch. But they're also strangely unsettling – and re-watching the film for this post, it was this openness, like a literary text that resists straightforward understanding, that especially stood out to me.

Beyond the high-level themes of planetary balance and the complex interplay between the natural world and the technological one humans have built within and upon it, director Godfrey Reggio never explicitly tells you what to think or feel. As a viewer you're not shepherded to respond in any particular way but rather, to bring your own reaction, your own interpretation to the table.

And so to finish my contribution to appreciating this incredible piece of work, I'd like to highlight a brief section from about half way through the film, which I think shows this especially well.

It begins with a super sped up timelapse sequence of a crowd queueing in what looks like a train station, followed by a series of slowed down shots of pedestrians walking along busy city streets. These scenes are so familiar – I've shot umpteen versions of them across my entire career for documentaries I've worked on. They're so generic, at this point they border on the cliched.

Yet in slowing them way down, they are defamiliarised and leap off the screen in a completely fresh way, forcing you to look so much more closely, both at the surroundings and at the faces.

And yet more faces follow in the final part of the clip, with a series of portrait shots of people looking straight down the lens. These shots feel almost confronting in their total lack of context and explanation. The expressions on the faces feel inscrutable, almost uncanny. What are they thinking, what are they trying to tell us?

There is of course no answer, or at least no 'right answer'. And that I think is true of the movie as a whole. It means what you want it to mean (and that may or may not be something different here in the mid-2020s than it would have been back in 1982). But whatever it means to you, this is a movie that once seen, I'm sure you'll never forget.

Koyaanisqatsi is widely available to view online. It’s also been released in various DVD & Blu-ray versions, most recently in 2012 by the Criterion Collection as part of a 3 disc box set containing two subsequent companion films also made by Reggio (and scored by Philip Glass), Powaqqatsi (1988) and Nagoyqatsi (2002).

If you’ve seen it, I’d love to know your thoughts - comments open as always 😃 (and a click on the ❤️ below is always a lovely gift too if you enjoyed this!)

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Watch my film on Netflix & Disney+ (UK/Europe only) or Vimeo-on-demand - or see trailer, reviews & bonus content HERE

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As promised in my meandering update for March, here's a lovingly crafted round up of cultural goodies for you, for the month just gone and the one to come.

It’s my personal selection box of some things I've enjoyed that you might too and some others I've got in my sights over the next few weeks. Plus a short film to watch at the end (a holdover from the recommendations I used to do in my old newsletter for my film, which I’m bringing back just cos it was always a lovely thing to do!)

If you’ve any thoughts, responses, critiques or otherwise about anything I’m sharing here I would LOVE to hear them, so don’t be shy - just hit reply in your inbox or jump into the comments below:

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And so without further ado, let's dive in.

WHAT I WAS ENJOYING IN MARCH

Reading

Fiction-wise, aside from my continuing, year-long reading project of Malorie Blackman's YA novel series Noughts & Crosses (I'm currently mid-way through the second book, Knife Edge), I picked up one of my son’s books, R.J. Palacio's tear-jerking but life-affirming page-turner about a boy with a severe craniofacial difference, Wonder. And I'm luxuriating in the audio version of Kate Atkinson's witty but intensely human short story collection, Normal Rules Don't Apply.

It wasn’t intentional but my non-fiction reads this month all in their own way speak to some of the uncertainties and frustrations I've been feeling whilst navigating this particular chapter of my work and family life.

Predictably Irrational, published by Duke University social scientist at the outset of the financial crisis in 2008, is a fascinating look at psychology and behavioural economics that’s both addictively thought-provoking and fun to read.

I Didn't Do the Thing Today by , had me gasping in relief and recognition on practically every page. It’s honestly a balm to the soul if, like me, you read all the productivity books, buy the planners and stickers and pretty coloured pens - but still never quite feel like you're on top of life…

And I've just started Johann Hari's Stolen Focus, which so far is a compelling and alarming look at the collapse in our collective attention spans.

On Substack, I adored this piece by on the names we give things and this lyrical meditation on connection from , taking in the HMRC hold music, a primary school SEND unit and a Tudor child's shoe unearthed from the mud of the River Thames. And I was stopped in my tracks by this raw slice of memoir from , prompted by revisiting a street where she once - actually twice - used to live and being flooded with intense recollections from her past.

I try to stay away from too much politics on the platform but this piece by on the potential dangers of the Trump White House for global nuclear proliferation was sobering and eye-opening. Whilst provided a useful corrective to inflated fears of runaway energy demand from AI in this piece on energy efficiency and the lessons from history.

Finally, if you're in need of a chuckle, aka , takes us back to his chaotic early days of parenting a baby whilst also working as a probation officer (spoiler alert - it's no cake walk!) in a two part series here and here.

Watching

On the telly box I've been enjoying some meaty female-created comedy in the shape of Daisy May Cooper's Am I Being Unreasonable and Bridget Christie's The Change, both on their second series. And like everyone else in the world it seems, I took a deep breath and watched Adolescence on Netflix, a shattering but essential viewing experience and one that sent a particularly chilling shiver through me as the mother of a pre-teen son about to start at secondary school in just a few months' time1.

I also watched some excellent TV documentaries, including the ITV spycops series I mentioned last month and a feature-length BBC doc broadcast last year to mark the 40th anniversary of the IRA bomb detonated during the Conservative Party Conference in 1984, Bombing Brighton: The Plot to Kill Thatcher.

I was also stunned and deeply moved by the extraordinary story - and on-the-ground footage - of a young, British volunteer war rescuer in Ukraine who was killed in a suspected war crime in January 2023, in another BBC feature doc, Hell Jumper.

Movie-wise, it was an eclectic month, leaping around close to a century of cinema. I went back to the 1920s with a fresh-faced Joan Crawford in Our Dancing Daughters (which I’ll be discussing with soon on podcast), which also led me to watching the 2022 Margot Robbie/Brad Pitt silent movie-era romp Babylon and revisiting a much older Joan Crawford in her classic 1962 face off with nemesis Bette Davis, in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?.

I revisited the 00s, with Christopher Nolan's Victorian-London-set The Prestige from 2006 and the thoroughly silly, but solidly entertaining Jim Carrey film Yes Man from 2008 (watched with the kids). And I spent a couple of hauntingly unsettling hours in contemporary Japan, immersed in the subtle ecological thriller Evil Does Not Exist, a film that’s lingered in my imagination long after the credits rolled.

Listening

I added a couple of new-to-me podcasts into my rotation this month, both of them strong recommends.

Monstrosities Mon Amour is hosted on Substack by self-styled ‘genial geek’ , whose book Concretopia was one of my partner's most well-received presents a few Christmases ago.2 John describes it as a place to “celebrate the things that other folk slag off” and so far it’s covered Corby bus station, Junction 3 of the M32 and my own local ‘concrete monstrosity’ Brighton Marina. Marvellous stuff.

And I don't know how I'd managed to miss that the good folk behind the Scarred for Life book series about the traumatising corners of 70s & 80s pop culture (as mentioned in my Threads bonus post) also do a podcast in which they invite their guests to share ‘three terrors from their childhood’. Recent episodes have included actor Michael Sheen discussing UFOs in his home town of Port Talbot and comedian Angela Barnes on nuclear bunkers. Seriously, how could I resist!!

ON MY RADAR IN APRIL

There are new seasons of Doctor Who and Black Mirror coming this month but frankly, it’s the Easter school holidays for most of April, so I expect to be watching a lot of Bluey (new episodes on the iPlayer now - woo!), Bob the Builder (the original, obvs), Horrible Histories and Go, Dog. Go! (yep, Netflix managed to turn a 20 page 1961 children’s board book into 40 episodes of animated canine chaos - and my 5 year old can’t get enough of it😄).

We’ve also got a cinema outing planned to see the Oscar-winning animated film Flow, which I’m really looking forward to. And for our ‘movie nights’ at home, my other half and I have got our eye on the epic new Viktor Kossakovsky essay film Architecton on the BFI Player, Grand Theft Hamlet on Mubi and (if I can persuade him), Pamela Anderson’s apparent tour de force showing in her latest film The Last Showgirl, which is also coming to Mubi this month.

Lastly a quick plug for the sensational autism documentary I’ve mentioned previously, The Stimming Pool, which is now on release in cinemas around the UK (my son and I are going to a relaxed screening in Brighton next week). Why not check and see if there’s a screening near you?

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A SHORT FILM TO WATCH

One of the aspects of my son's autism diagnosis that has been helpful for us is realising that he sees and understands things in an extremely literal way. We're working on helping him find ways to think about metaphor that make sense to him and when I came across this short animation, I knew we should watch it together.

We did - and it prompted a nice little conversation afterwards about what we'd seen and what it might mean. Maybe this little woolen man and his bench will spark something in you too? I'd love to hear about it if so.

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And don’t forget, if you enjoyed this, it makes my day if you can click on the little ❤️ to show you liked it - and it helps other people find it too.

Over and out and see ya next time.

Vicki x

Watch my film on Netflix & Disney+ (UK/Europe only) or Vimeo-on-demand - or see trailer, reviews & bonus content HERE

Find me on Bluesky & at LinkedIn

And if you like it, why not subscribe to receive all the new posts in the series as I add them!

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As regulars readers will know, my 11 year old son was diagnosed as autistic last year - I wrote about it here if you're new to these parts and interested in hearing more of that story (and what it has to do with zebras!)

The diagnosis has naturally come with a lot of recommended resources to read, watch and listen to, which we're working our way through and learning a lot from. And it inevitably brought me to thinking about documentary films exploring autism too.

Alongside TV programmes like the BBC series, Inside Our Autistic Minds, from British wildlife presenter Chris Packham, who's autistic himself, a couple of stand out feature docs that I've included on my A-Z favourites list had left a deep impression on me, well before I was navigating the diagnosis pathway with my own son.

Both films in their own way shine a light on an autistic life lived with passion, but today I’m focusing on the earlier title by release date, Roger Ross William's big warm hug of a film, Life, Animated – an honest but ultimately joyous portrait of a non-verbal autistic boy who found his way back to an authentic, whole-hearted engagement with the world around him - through the magic of animation.

‘Someone kidnapped my son’

First released back in 2016, the film is based on the book of the same name, written by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind. Suskind's son Owen was diagnosed with autism in the early 1990s, after a sudden and distressing collapse in his motor and language skills when he was 3 years old.

Their happy little boy fell silent. And the family descended into a bewildering world of pain and frustration as Owen continually failed to communicate his thoughts and feelings to the outside world. But his parents never gave up hope of somehow breaking through the invisible barrier that seemed to separate them from their son.

Until one day, finally, they did. And it was all thanks to Owen's intense passion for Disney movies.

From the first tiny step, when they figured out that a hard-to-decipher word he kept repeating was a phrase from The Little Mermaid, to a far bigger breakthrough involving a hand puppet of Iago, the evil sidekick in Aladdin, it was the characters and stories in these beloved animated films that gradually allowed him to express his own feelings – and in turn understand more of how those around him felt too.

Disney was the key that unlocked the doors to Owen's life:

‘No sidekick gets left behind’

Much like The Stimming Pool, the co-created documentary I wrote about in my last meandering diary post that will be released in UK cinemas this spring, this is a film that doesn't just describe the autistic experience, but actually uses the creative possibilities of the medium itself to embody a sense of what it's like to exist in the world as an autistic person. Or as Williams himself says:

“Often films about people with disabilities are from the outside looking in. I always knew the whole idea behind the film is to see the world through Owen’s eyes and to get into his head and experience the world from the inside looking out.”

And of course, the way the film does this is through animation.

Owen's early life, his struggles and his gradual journey into dialogue and connection with the community around him are related in raw and often painfully frank interviews with Owen's family (father Ron, mother Cordelia and brother Walter) and other care providers. And there are of course the old family photos and videos of Owen as a young child that you'd expect to see in a documentary.

But it's the animation that really brings the film alive – with copious clips from Disney movies, including The Little Mermaid, Aladdin and The Lion King1 and with gorgeous new hand drawn animated sequences that both complement and contrast with those classic Disney clips.

From chilly monochrome scenes showing a scared and sad young child, the animation eventually morphs into glorious vivid colour, as the film reimagines a fantastical story book Owen wrote called 'The Land of the Lost Sidekicks'.

This book touchingly reveals how Owen identifies much more strongly with Disney's sidekick characters than with the heroes. And through this fully animated story embedded within the larger film, we see Owen heroically overcoming adversity as the triumphant friend of a little gang of these sidekicks, in a forest beset by evil.

Getting these sequences right was important to Williams. Owen loves the 2D hand-drawn animation of an earlier Disney era; he can't emotionally connect in the same way to the computer-generated animation that dominates today. And so Williams deliberately sought an animation partner who could create that sense of pen on paper coming magically to life, finding one in the French company Mac Guff, whose previous credits included Despicable Me and The Lorax.

‘When I look in the mirror I see a proud autistic man’

Whilst the animated scenes really do lead viewers on an immersive and evocative emotional journey into Owen's mind and heart, they probably wouldn't land with quite the same punch if they weren't interlaced with the other central narrative of the film, which introduces us to the young man Owen has grown up into.

An ongoing string of intimate, emotional and often unexpectedly funny, present-day verité scenes capture Owen in the transitional process of moving out from under his parents' wings into his own apartment at an assisted living facility 75 miles away.

We see him in thoughtful discussions with other autistic students; caught up in the intensity of first love as well as overcome with the hurt of your first love lost (“Why is life so full of unfair pain and tragedy?”); hanging out with his brother, who tries (not very successfully!) to broach the subject of sex; and meeting the voice actor who played baddie Jafar in Aladdin in one of the most joy-filled scenes in the entire movie.

Then at the very end, in true hero's journey fashion, Owen completes his transformation from small scared boy in the forest to confident young man making his way in the world, as we see him proudly celebrating himself and his autistic community in front of a huge audience (no spoilers on how this comes to pass!)

He is now no longer the sidekick, but very much the main character.

The best Disney movie that Disney didn’t make

This was how film critic Eric Kohn described the film2 and he's far from alone in his admiration. After winning the Directing Award at Sundance, where it premiered in 2016, the film went on to be nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the Oscars and won three Emmys, including for Best Documentary.

As for me, I vividly remember what a life-affirming watch it was the first time around. And re-watching it for this piece, I honestly fell in love with it all over again, albeit with the extra dimension now of being the parent of an autistic child myself, who has also had to learn about, and adjust to, my son's new, neurodivergent reality.3

I can also confirm that said autistic child very much enjoyed watching it too (yes, we watched it together😍).

At the time of writing, Life, Animated is readily available to rent on demand from all the usual places in the UK and elsewhere (I watched it free on Tubi but it's no longer currently showing there unfortunately). If you're in the US, you have a choice of several free platforms to stream it from including Pluto, Plex & Kanopy.

With Springtime feeling a long way off in these long and gloomy February days and with the political backdrop in so many parts of the world so troubling and uncertain, a couple of hours spent in Owen Suskind’s company will surely lift your spirits.

Why not give yourself that treat today. And if you do, please let me know what you think of the film - I’d love to hear from you!

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A quick final note.

For a lot of people animation is almost synonymous with Disney. But there’s a much bigger canvas out there to explore than just the mainstream fare - fantastic as much of it undoubtedly is - and there are some excellent publications right here on Substack (eg , , ) whose work will help open up this landscape to you and give you a sense of the expansive and thrilling possibilities of the genre.

If this post has sparked something for you then I would definitely encourage you to dive in and see what gems you can find.

Watch my film on Netflix & Disney+ (UK/Europe only) or Vimeo-on-demand - or see trailer, reviews & bonus content HERE

Find me on Bluesky & at LinkedIn

After experimenting for the first time with Substack video last week, sharing a short animated film from my archives as a producer…

…I’ve decided to step completely out of my comfort zone by recording myself actually talking to camera for you. And here it is!

The prompt for this was that I finished reading a wonderfully vivid, impressionistic atomic memoir - about a 1980s childhood spent in the shadow of the US nuclear weapons programme at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. I really enjoyed it and felt moved to tell you about it and try to give you a little flavour through reading some of my favourite extracts.

A video book report if you will.

The book is This Atom Bomb in Me, by Lindsey A. Freeman, and it’s published by Redwood Press, an imprint of Stanford University Press.

You can get it from Bookshop in the UK here, and in the US here. And if you’re based elsewhere, then the internet is your friend - just search and I’m sure you’ll be able to find yourself a copy 😊

I really hope you enjoy this. And if you do, PLEASE let me know by clicking the like button - those little hearts truly make my day and give me the confidence to keep showing up and creating different things that I hope will resonate.

And comments, re-stacks and shares all really help with getting my work out to more people too. Thanks!

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I hope you’ve had a good week and that you enjoyed reading my interview with Cornelius Holtorf. If you didn’t get a chance to check it out yet, here’s the link again:

As well as personal memories from around the time of the Chernobyl disaster (which had a particularly profound social impact in Germany, where Cornelius is from), it’s packed with ideas and insights from his work as an archaeologist into the monumental challenge of safely storing the high-level radioactive waste material produced by both nuclear weapons and nuclear power, over an almost unimaginably long timescale.

One of the things he references is the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico and the work done by a panel of experts at the Sandia National Laboratories, including social scientists, historians, archaeologists, futurists and climatologists convened to try to come up with a warning system to alert people many thousands of years into the future to the presence of this radioactive material.

The resulting report, first published in 1993, included a warning text and images of possible physical warning markers that could be left at the eventual waste repository (on the basis that language might have changed or even disappeared over such a vast time frame).

And back in 2010, I produced a brief animation inspired by this report, which I’m sharing with you here today.

It was the first time I’d ever worked directly with an animator and one of the earliest films I produced independently outside of my TV work and there are definitely things I would change about it if I made it again today. But it was a fascinating piece to work on. And fun fact (which will probably only make sense to readers of a certain age) it was narrated by none other than… the Man from Del Monte!1

Here’s the text of the Long Term Nuclear Warning Waste Message in full:

This place is a message... and part of a system of messages... pay attention to it!

Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.

This place is not a place of honor...no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing valued is here.

What is here is dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger.

The danger is in a particular location... it increases toward a center... the center of danger is here... of a particular size and shape, and below us.

The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours.

The danger is to the body, and it can kill.

The form of the danger is an emanation of energy.

The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.

Do let me know what you think of the video and I’ll look forward to being back in your inbox with more guests sharing their atomic experiences with you very soon.

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And don’t be shy in clicking on the ❤️ or re-stacking in Notes if you enjoyed this - it really does help others to find it too.

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As I teased yesterday (in my shout out for the Documentary Oscars shortlist chat I did over on podcast in case you missed it), I’m here like one of Santa’s little elves offering up this very special collaboration for your festive delectation. The hat really suits me don’t you think? 😆

I was thrilled to be invited to help compile this curated guide to some perfect movies for enjoying this holiday season - alongside a carefully chosen drink or snack accompaniment. A most excellent idea, for which full credit must go to from .

It’s been great fun seeing this guide come together with a really great mixture of perennial classics, deep cuts and some quality, unexpected choices suggested by this brilliant bunch of film & TV Substackers.

I highly recommend you check them all out - after you’ve delved into their very special seasonal selections of course!

Click to view entire guide

For my pick, you won’t be surprised that I’ve gone for a film of the non-fiction variety. I’d been saving up Apple TV’s ‘Twas the Fight Before Christmas’ for my own holiday viewing this year - and so this was the perfect opportunity both to watch it and to share it. Here’s a sneaky-preview of my contribution. But if you want to know what consumable treat I paired this with, then you’ll have to check out the full guide 😁

And with that, this is my festive sign off. Thanks for reading, replying, commenting and leaving those little hearts on my posts this past year (they really do help). I appreciate all of it - and all of you ❤️

With excited anticipation for what’s to come for this space in 2025, until then I’m wishing you a VERY Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Vicki x

This post is, I’m bound to say, very much on the dark side of the street. But it’s reassuring to be reminded that the light is never too far away, eh…

And so on to business. I decided to separate this final resources section of my larger Threads post out on its own, to prevent the original from becoming too unwieldy.

If you missed that first post you can catch up here (and do check out the comments which are well worth your time too – including recollections very kindly shared by who actually appeared in the film as an extra):

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There's no denying Threads is an incredibly tough watch. So if you don't think your nervous system can take it right now, that's ok. Sometimes a more dispassionate, journalistic approach can be easier to handle - especially emotionally - than the intense human feelings generated by drama.

If you do feel moved to learn more about the impacts of nuclear weapons but don't feel ready for the full embodied gut punch of watching Threads, here are some of the factual programmes made in the same period which either inspired or were inspired by it. And of course, if you've seen Threads but want more context these would be greatly recommended for you as well.

Panorama – If the Bomb Drops (broadcast March 1980)

Presented by a fresh-faced Jeremy Paxman, this was the programme that first publicly revealed the government's farcically insufficient 'Protect & Survive' guidance, produced between 1974 and 1980, on what ordinary people should do in the event of a nuclear attack. The attitude of some of the public officials revealed by this film is disturbing to say the least...

QED – A Guide to Armageddon (broadcast July 1982)

The documentary made by Mick Jackson that directly inspired Threads. The dispassionate tones used to describe the impact of a nuclear blast on the human body are particularly bone-chilling (and their imprint on the narration employed in Threads itself is very apparent too):

On the 8^th Day (broadcast Sept 1984, the day after Threads)

This documentary goes deeper into the (then) new theory of nuclear winter, developed by scientists on both sides of the Iron Curtain, many, rather extraordinarily, working on it in their spare time. It reveals devastating potential impacts on the planet from smoke and soot from a nuclear blast, including temperature drops of up to 40ºC.

The Newsnight Nuclear Debate (broadcast Sept 1984, the day after Threads)

A programme that feels like a relic from another age in so many ways.

A panel made up entirely of middle aged, white men in suits; lengthy discussion of complicated ideas amongst contributors who certainly don't all agree with one another, but express that disagreement with a respectful spirit of intellectual engagement and curiosity, (as compared to the ad hominem point-calling in social media friendly soundbites we get served up today); and above all an entire hour of mainstream terrestrial television devoted to discussing the possibility, likelihood and ramifications - politically, socially and scientifically - of nuclear war.

Protect & Survive – the films

Worth watching if you've never seen them, here's the full collection of films in the aforementioned British public information series, 20 episodes in all - sinister and absurd in equal measure. And once you know, it I guarantee that jingle will forever haunt your nightmares..

As well is these contemporary factual companion pieces, there’s a whole world of other Threads-adjacent content out there to explore if you want to delve even deeper (and this is by no means an exhaustive list).

Radio/Podcasts

On the audio front, BBC Radio 4 recently produced an episode of 'Archive on 4' to mark the 40^th anniversary:

And if you want to go really in-depth, Julie McDowall's superb Atomic Hobo podcast, home to a wealth of excellent nuclear weapons-related content, breaks down the film minute-by-minute in an extended series of episodes covering 'Four Minutes of Threads' - here’s the first one:

Books

Books-wise, a new book to mark the 40^th anniversary has been published this year by author Bob Milke:

There's also a good interiew with Milke talking about his book on another recommended podcast My Nuclear Life:

And the recently-published third edition in the Scarred for Life book series exploring the darker reaches of pop culture in 70s & 80s Britain apparently has several chapters devoted to Threads:

A great exchange in the comments on my original piece with inspired me to flag up this book by Eric Schlosser, best known for writing Fast Food Nation, which looks at another extremely scary aspect of the nuclear weapons issue not really touched on in Threads – the possibility of accidental use. Its recounting of a number of alarming nuclear weapons accidents in the United States over several decades will not help you sleep any easier at night.

And related but no less terrifying is the risk of a nuclear exchange taking place because of a false alarm or miscommunication. Such false alarms had incredibly happened just the year before Threads was broadcast, not once but twice. This book by esteemed documentary filmmaker and writer Taylor Downing takes us through the events of that year in careful, panic-inducing detail.

Julie McDowall has also published a highly recommended book on Britain's preparations for nuclear armageddon:

Online

As well as humming comments sections on YouTube, Reddit and IMDb, I can't not mention the incredible online community of 'Thread-heads', the Threads Survivors Facebook group, where pushing 2000 members get together to obsess over the film. The group's founder Sean Judge even makes action figures of the famous traffic warden who adorned the cover of the Radio Times the week it was broadcast in 1984.

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And finally a few other drama recommendations - should you feel like subjecting yourself to an atomic apocalypse movie marathon...

When The Wind Blows (1986)

As I mentioned in the larger post, Threads was far from alone in tackling nuclear war through the medium of film in the 1980s. Raymond Briggs' animated movie When The Wind Blows (adapted from the graphic novel of the same name) covers much of the same territory as Threads, but at a further remove from the detonation of the bomb, following as it does an elderly couple in rural Sussex, some 50 odd miles from London.

We watch the couple confusedly try to prepare for the coming attack, with muddled recollections of their experience of the Second World War intermingled with ineffective attempts at following the Protect & Survive government advice pamphlet. With its title song famously supplied by David Bowie and a soundtrack with contributions from Roger Waters, Genesis, Squeeze, Hugh Cornwell and Paul Hardcastle, it's heartbreakingly moving in its quiet depiction of total devastation.

The Day After / Testament (both 1983)

There were fictional attempts to render the impacts of nuclear war on the other side of the Atlantic too. In fact, Jackson heard about probably the best known of these, 1983's The Day After, featuring a big-name cast led by Jason Robards and JoBeth Williams, while he was still in pre-production on Threads. Concerned about duplication, he vowed to stop work on his film if the American offering provided an honest rendering of the true likely effects of a nuclear strike. Obviously he felt it didn't, since he did of course go on to complete production on Threads.

His main objection about the made-for-TV movie, which depicts the aftermath of a nuclear strike on US soil on a rural community in Kansas, was its ‘Hollywoodification' - reducing nuclear apocalypse to familiar disaster film tropes:

“At one point, in what should be the hellish confusion of a hospital overrun with maimed survivors – and isn't – the camera 'dramatically' dollies into a close-up of Jason Robards as he delivers a set-piece monologue, describing 'what he saw' and 'what he felt'. I'm not sure if the music swelled or not, though I certainly remember it doing so.”1

Broadcast the same year, another less well know nuclear drama, Testament, this one made by a female director, depicts the slow devastation and death wrought on a suburban Bay Area town after much of the eastern coast of the United States is taken out by a series of nuclear explosions. Though far from the blast impact itself (the film never shows a mushroom cloud or any direct scenes of nuclear violence), destruction still comes to the town in the shape of food and fuel shortages, later followed by radiation sickness, rapid onset dementia, the gradual breakdown of law and order and ultimately civilisational collapse.

Full disclosure: I've not seen either The Day After or Testament, though I certainly plan to. If you have watched/do watch them, I'd love to know what you make of them. Here are both trailers:

The War Game (1965)

I can't finish this piece without at least some reference to another British nuclear bomb film, which preceded Threads by 20 years and was a definite influence both on Jackson himself and on the BBC's decision to commission Threads. The War Game, by 29 year old British director Peter Watkins, definitely merits its own full piece (she says, adding to list!) but for now here are the top-lines of what you need to know.

Filmed in early 1965, it is, like Threads, a docudrama depicting the effects of a nuclear bomb being detonated over the UK, in this case, on Kent, south of London – a retaliatory strike by the Soviet Union in response to a US nuclear strike on them. But unlike Threads, despite being commissioned by the BBC, it was, on delivery, deemed “too horrifying for the medium of broadcast” and likely to cause “considerable distress and a defeatist attitude amongst the mass TV-watching public” and wasn't actually broadcast on television, or indeed publicly screened anywhere in the UK, for almost another 20 years.

It did have limited international screenings and actually won the 1967 Oscar for Best Documentary. Subsequent investigations have revealed a disturbing degree of pressure brought to bear on the BBC by the Home Office not to screen the film, something which Jackson, who joined the BBC around that time, says caused a great deal of internal shame at the corporation. That's another story for another day though. Till then, if you can face it, here's a brief extract:

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[CONTAINS SPOILERS]

'THE NIGHT THE COUNTRY DIDN'T SLEEP'

On the evening of Sunday 23^rd September 1984, viewers tuning into BBC2 after a cosy evening watching Germaine Greer on a vintage paddle steamer, a profile of Bury St Edmunds and Championship Darts1, were in for a shock.

The BBC did offer this brief on-screen introduction from journalist John Tusa.

Frankly though, Tusa's understated warning that 'some of the scenes which follow may distress you' could scarcely have adequately prepared anyone watching for what's widely considered one of the most traumatising pieces of television ever broadcast, one that 40 years later has lost absolutely none of its bleak and unremitting horror.

Indeed, in many ways, the experience of watching it in 2024 is even more unsettling. But I'm getting ahead of myself...

For anyone not familiar with it, Threads is a feature-length docudrama that follows the ordinary residents of Sheffield, in Yorkshire, England, through the run-up to, and aftermath of, a nuclear exchange over Britain by the Cold War superpowers. The title comes from a brief opening sequence of a spider spinning a web, a metaphor for the 'threads' that make up the fabric of society, which comes with an ominous warning:

“But the connections that make society strong, also make it vulnerable.”

Fully the first three quarters of an hour of its 112 minute running time feels like an episode of a soap opera, or even a fly-on-the-wall documentary, so low key and naturalistic is its style.

We watch as two young lovers, Jimmy and Ruth, one working class, one middle class, deal with an unplanned pregnancy. We see the couple get engaged, talking about the future and decorating their new flat, while their respective families muddle along as they deal with the news, their younger siblings bickering, their parents worrying.

But all the while, in the background of this everyday human drama, there is the slow drumbeat of impending conflict. We get glimpses of the wider world in radio and TV news reports and newspaper headlines. There are mentions of a lost submarine and a Soviet attack in Iran. We see anti-nuclear demonstrators protesting in the streets and ill-prepared officials, staring at charts, worrying about fuel stocks and supply lines.

As hostilities escalate and a national emergency is declared, food supplies start to be affected, petrol stations are closed and families pack up their cars attempting to flee the city. None of it seems quite real to people and black humour punctuates the sense of growing dread:

“I tell you what, if the bomb does drop I want to be pissed out of my mind and straight underneath it when it happens.”

“If we are gonna kop it, we might as well go out with a bang”

And then it finally happens. At just after 8.30 in the morning, the first bomb explodes. The minutes that follow are visceral. People scream and run in abject terror; one woman memorably urinates herself. It's a scene of utter, apocalyptic pandemonium and chaos. And from this point on, the nightmare never gives up for a single moment.

More nuclear strikes take place. Charred limbs and dead pets pile up in the streets; people wander, blinded, disfigured and starving. Down in their bunker, local council officers, overwhelmed and panicked, argue in futile anger as they make unthinkable decisions about who to give food to and who is just going to die anyway. The local hospital is a vision of hell, doctors surrounded by dying and already-dead patients and carrying out amputations without anaesthetic.

In a shocking move that defies normal dramatic convention, one of the two main characters, Jimmy, simply disappears after the immediate impact and is never seen or heard of again in the rest of the film. This of course is what would, in reality, happen. Many thousands of people's loved ones would be obliterated in an instant.

Yet arguably Jimmy's (presumed swift) fate is better than Ruth's. She sees her family perish from radiation sickness; is forced to leave what remains of the city for a scorched and devastated countryside, where she find herself eating a dead, probably irradiated sheep, to ward off starvation; and she ends up giving birth by herself in a barn, forced to bite through the umbilical cord with her teeth.2

One might expect the birth of a baby to signal a small note of hope amongst the horror. But no such relief is offered here.

The film continues a relentless march on through the years following, showing us a nation reduced to medieval population levels in which civilisation has fundamentally broken down and even language is being lost – the adult survivors barely speak at all whilst the children growing up in this world speak a strange, degraded dialect with little more than the most basic utterances.

After Ruth dies, having gone blind from the effects of nuclear fallout, her daughter Jane is left to fend for herself, alone in this harsh, nihilistic world. The films ends, ten years on from the onset of nuclear war, in a moment of such unspeakable bleakness the screen cuts to black on the point of a scream rather than show it to us.

As the credits roll, it feels hard to breathe, to try to take in what we've seen. There's no crumb of a happy ending to take comfort in, no moment of catharsis, just complete and utter despair.

A REAL LIFE HORROR MOVIE - the facts behind Threads

The film is an extraordinary piece of work on every level. The writing and acting – including from hundreds of locals from Sheffield recruited as extras – is sparse, understated and incredibly affecting. And the visual impact of the film is truly remarkable, not least given that it was shot in only 17 days and on a modest public service broadcasting budget of just £400,000, about £1.3million in today's money.3

The visual effects we do see – the mushroom cloud, collapsing buildings and burning vehicles, melting milk bottles, horrific burn injuries – are chilling. But the sound design and expressions on people's faces speak to an even greater horror which our minds can hardly bear to conjure.

But for me, although all these aspects play a crucial role, they're not the real reason Threads is so frightening.

It's fiction, yes (thank God). But in a very meaningful way, it's also brutally, terrifyingly factual.

Directed by British science TV producer (and later Hollywood movie director) Mick Jackson, its dramatic rendering of the impacts of a nuclear strike is underpinned by unimpeachable, real-world facts and research.

Its immediate forerunner was a BBC science programme that Jackson had made a couple of years previously, which soberly runs through the specific effects of the blast impact, fireball and radiation release from a nuclear explosion on the human body and built environment, over an increasing radius from the bomb's detonation in central London.

For both that documentary and Threads itself, Jackson and writer Barry Hines, of Kes fame, did months of research, speaking to scientists, doctors and other experts, trawling through official Home Office reports and even spending a week at the UK's Civil Defence College, which provided training for “official survivors”.

One, at-the-time still new, scientific idea was particularly influential - that of nuclear winter. This concept was proposed by various scientists, including famed American cosmologist Carl Sagan, who extrapolated from knowledge of the atmospheric conditions on Mars and the observed impacts of volcanic eruptions on earth, to try to understand what might happen to the atmosphere in the event of nuclear war.

Their computer models suggested that the vast quantities of smoke that would be released into the upper atmosphere from the raging fires caused by the use of even a small fraction of the world's nuclear arsenal, would have catastrophic effects, not just in the areas where the strikes occurred, but across the globe.

As the soot from the smoke blocked out almost all of the sun's rays, the earth would endure weeks if not months of permanent twilight and temperatures would plunge, in many places to sub-zero levels. This would have devastating impacts on the global food system, leading to widespread crop failure and famine - as we see in Threads.

The faithful adherence to the best scientific and political predictions of what would actually happen in the event of nuclear war, was something Jackson viewed as essential to the project. It's the reason for the 'docu' portions of the docudrama – specifically Paul Vaughan's somber, dispassionate narration that's interwoven with the drama scenes all the way through the film.

Jackson has talked about how these narrated inserts caused a lot of friction with his writing collaborator Hines, who was deeply unconvinced of the merits of including them. In the end Jackson got his way – and at least for me, it was the right decision.

The baldly stated factual information – of megatons dropped, rising death tolls, social breakdown - serves as a continuing reminder, especially in the latter, bleakest parts of the film, that what we're watching isn't just a horror movie, a work of febrile imagination. It's based in fact. And all the harder to face for that.

'A WAY OF THINKING ABOUT THE UNTHINKABLE' - The Impact of Watching Threads

In a special interview to mark the 40^th anniversary screening on the BBC, Jackson talks about the impact on viewers that night in 1984. He remembers the deafening silence from the telephone on the night of transmission – a stark contrast to the congratulatory phone calls from colleagues that would normally follow one of your programmes going out on TV.

Only the morning after was he told that very few people who'd watched it had gone to bed – they'd just sat in their chairs all night thinking about it, afraid perhaps of the nightmares that would come. It gave them, he said, a way of thinking about the unthinkable – the images from Threads lurking in their minds ready to resurface whenever they heard politicians glibly talking about actually using these weapons.

The film certainly left a very deep impression on me when I first watched it, about 15 years ago, one afternoon in my London flat, entirely unprepared for what was to come.

Rewatching it in 2024, whilst I clearly remembered the relentless spiral of bleakness, especially in the final section of the film, I realised I must have blanked out many of the specific physical and emotional horrors we see the characters endure, most notably the birth scene and the final image. These scenes in particular hit me all the harder this time around, now that I've got children of my own.

In writing this piece I also solicited other people's thoughts and memories of Threads. I've sprinkled a few of the briefer responses I received throughout, but wanted to include two longer comments here, one from on Substack and the other from Ian Mclellan on X.

From Wendy:

I missed Threads when it was first shown on TV in 1984, though I remember colleagues talking about how realistic and horrific it was. I finally got round to watching it a few years ago and was riveted. I grew up near Sheffield, and the author Barry Hines lived down the road, so the locations and voices were all really familiar, which I think made it all feel even more personal.

I watched it with a couple of friends, one of whom was a council communications officer at the time, and he said he could imagine the council response team having similar reactions now. There was that contrast between local bureaucracy in the council “bunker” and the apocalyptic scenes outside. The image of the family sheltering behind a propped door stuck with me. As if that would save them. Such a bleak drama, but so important and so well-made.

And from Ian:

I do have memories of watching Threads in 1984. It is intertwined in my head with other books and TV shows at the time like Z for Zachariah and Noah’s Castle. The world seemed very turbulent as a teenager and apocalypse seemed like a very real possibility.

3 years later and I was in the RAF and I got to see first hand what we were supposed to be training for. Looking back it was very Heath-Robinson and the scenes in Threads in the council bunker are true to life in my experience. On my second tour I was trained to be part of an NBC (nuclear biological chemical) Recce team. We would have been sent out to look for chemical weapon contamination. One of our pieces of ‘equipment’ was a broom handle to which we were supposed to attach a piece of ‘detector paper’. We would dab the ground and if the paper changed colour we would put up warning signs.

So Threads does a great job I think of mixing the horror and the bizarre. We all agreed at our radar site that we wouldn’t want to survive in to a nuclear winter. Threads had ‘educated’ us to the likely after effects of an attack.

Both of these responses I think reinforce just what an effective job Jackson and his team did on their research to make the events shown as true to life as they possibly could be. I can only imagine how much more difficult to watch the film must be when the locations are places familiar to you in your everyday life.

40 YEARS ON – Threads today

As a film made for TV rather than the cinema, and in spite of its tremendous psychological impact on viewers, Threads has still probably not been as widely seen as it deserves.

It was shown in the US, Canada and Australia (thanks for confirming the last of these) a year after its UK broadcast, in 1985. The commercial channels that screened it took the highly unusual step of running it straight through without adverts. The BBC also repeated it in August 1985 to mark the 40^th anniversary of the atomic bombs being dropped at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

It was then not shown again on British television for almost another two decades, until October 2003. Its recent 40^th anniversary airing was thus only the fourth time the BBC had shown it. 4

From the reams of articles and online comments written to mark the anniversary it's clear how much the film still resonates. And it's not hard to see why.

Whilst some things have changed since 1984 – there are obviously no mobile phones and the casual sexism on display feels pretty jarring from today's vantage point – at the same time, many of the film's scariest aspects feel just as much a threat, if not even more so, now as they were four decades ago.

The first and most obvious consideration is the actual possibility of nuclear attack. The period in which Threads was made was undoubtedly a time of international instability. The arms race between the US and the Soviet Union intensified with the Soviet-Afghan war and the Americans' deployment of ballistic and cruise missiles in Western Europe. Mutual suspicion between the rival Cold War superpowers was front and centre of political and public consciousness.

And yet, by one credible estimate of the actual threat level – the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Doomsday Clock initiative which has been in operation since 1947 – the chance of nuclear armageddon is higher now than it was in the mid-1980s.

In 1984, the Doomsday Clock was set at 3 minutes to midnight. Today it's 90 seconds to midnight, the closest to global catastrophe it has ever been. And earlier this year the UN Secretary General also warned the Security Council that the risk of nuclear warfare is at its highest level in decades.

The wars in Ukraine and Gaza, escalating conflict between Israel and Iran, the suspension of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, the commitment by both Russia and China to increase their nuclear weapons capabilities plus a new generation of nuclear warheads on the way here in Britain, not to mention North Korea and the possibility of Trump back in the White House – all of these things are contributing to a situation in which the use of a nuclear weapon feels like something that could plausibly happen.

And yet despite this record-breaking level of threat, our preparedness for the possibility of a nuclear strike, both literally and psychologically, seems notably lower than 40 years ago.

In the '80s, the sense that nuclear war might be just around the corner was widely felt. The topic was regularly discussed on news programmes, anti-nuclear activism was mainstream (helped by the coverage of the Greenham Common women's peace camps) and it was a touchstone of popular culture, across not just film and TV5, but pop music, art and literature.

You simply cannot say the same today. Where is this generation’s answer to Threads?

The closest we’ve come is probably last year’s blockbuster Oppenheimer biopic but that focuses far more of its attention on the psychodrama of the lead character’s personal moral choices than it does on the actual impacts of his work. We see nothing of the effect of the bomb tests on the indigenous population around the Los Alamos test site, never mind the effect on the Japanese victims of the two atomic bombs that were actually dropped. And of course it all feels like a period piece - tucked safely away from us across the decades of history.

And then there's the question of our official preparedness. Britain's Civil Defence Corps was disbanded in 1968 and a 2022 investigation by researchers at Warwick University found scant evidence of that the UK has made comprehensive plans to deal with a nuclear strike:

“We appear much less prepared than we were back in the 1960s when numerous preparations, including exercises in which the public participated, were made”.

Nuclear bunkers have taken on a kitsch, retro quality, like World War 2 Anderson shelters (see this recent article about a bunker in Norfolk that's up for sale). There's really no sense at all that the authorities would do a better job in the event of nuclear catastrophe than the overwhelmed bureaucrats we see in Threads.

In fact of course, we've very recently experienced just how hopelessly ill-prepared our government was when a major emergency hit – this despite boasting of our world class pandemic preparedness. It's almost unthinkable to imagine how our leaders would cope with a nuclear strike that they show no signs of thinking is possible, despite the current threat being at unprecedented levels.

And even if the threat were taken seriously, it's not at all clear that any government would have the capacity to adequately respond anyway, after 14 years of austerity and the withdrawal of state support from so many areas of public life.

The pre-armageddon scenes in Threads are a time capsule of Thatcherism, unsentimentally portraying the economic precarity that characterised life for so many in 1980s Britain. But the situation we find ourselves in today, with a 'black hole' in the public finances and millions in irregular, insecure work is scarcely better.

All in all, the experience of watching Threads today remains an incredibly powerful one. You probably won't sleep well afterwards. But you will far better understand what's at stake when Vladimir Putin orders Russia's military to rehearse the use of so-called tactical nuclear weapons in combat, as he did in May this year. Or if a newly-elected Donald Trump repeats the threat he made against North Korea in 2017 of 'fire and fury like the world has never seen'.

Turning away from the truth of nuclear weapons, whilst certainly a lot more comfortable, won't make us any safer. To quote the eminent 20^th century American historian Henry Steele Commager:

“The greatest danger that threatens us is neither heterodox thought nor orthodox thought, but the absence of thought.”

Thanks for reading this very long post - there’s just SO much to say about this film! I’d love to keep the conversation going so if you watched the BBC re-run a couple of weeks ago (or whenever else you may have watched it) and have thoughts to share, do send them my way, via email or in the comments.

And I’d also love to get your recommendations for other atomic films that have made an impression on you for future Substack posts, watch parties etc. And look out for a bit more Threads-related goodness coming your way soon…

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One of the things I love about documentaries is the inherent potential for the unplanned or unexpected to occur. Of course, even in completely observational vérité films, the director will usually have at least some idea of what they anticipate capturing on camera. But they don't know for sure what will happen. Real people – and perhaps even more crucially – real events, can and do intervene to turn plans on their head. And when they do, it can lead to documentary gold. That's certainly what happened in The Queen of Versailles.

‘Filthy rich’

Back in 2007, when director Lauren Greenfield first started filming self-described 'timeshare king', David Siegel and his wife Jackie, a former 'Mrs Florida' some 30 years his junior- alongside their 8 children and many, many pets - she had a clear story arc in mind. The film would be focused around documenting the couple’s efforts to build a mind-bogglingly vast and extravagant new mansion, styled after the palace at Versailles, with a few floors of their favourite Vegas hotel plonked on top.

At 90,000 square feet, it was, they proudly proclaimed, going to be the biggest and most expensive single-family private house in America - with 13 bedrooms, 22 bathrooms, 9 kitchens, a fitness centre and spa, a bowling alley, video arcade, full-size ballroom, roller-skate rink, aquarium, three indoor pools, two outdoor pools, tennis courts and a baseball diamond.

Greenfield's lens was firmly turned on the extremities and absurdities of unbridled wealth in America, or as the Siegels' adopted daughter Jonquil at one point calls it, the life of 'the filthy rich'.

But then the financial crisis of 2008 hit – and everything changed.

Suddenly Greenfield had a completely different film on her hands. If you've not seen it, here's the trailer:

‘Riches-to-rags’

The film reveals that Siegel's business empire has been built on debt – and when the banks turn off the money taps, things come to a crashing halt. We see him forced to lay off thousands of staff and drastically cut wages for those who remain and the couple's household staff is cut from 19 down to just 4 (three nannies and a housekeeper.)

The kids are moved to public schools and to liquidate cash, they start trying to sell off everything from private jets and limos to antiques purchased to furnish 'Versailles'. Construction on the mansion is stopped, before the half-finished shell is itself also put up for sale.

Meanwhile, we see David at work, defiantly refusing to sell his flagship timeshare resort in Vegas, which at a stroke would make all his financial problems go away. And we meet his adult son, who works for him but describes their relationship as 'not close'. And we see Jackie starting up a giant thrift store, many of whose customers are laid off employees of her husband's.

We also spend a lot of time with the family in their current home – which at 26,000 square feet is still a lavish property, albeit dwarfed by what Jackie had planned for her new home.

There are some extraordinary domestic scenes including the moment Jackie finds one of the kid's pet lizards dead from dehydration and a mad search around the house for some puppies before they fall victim to another kid's pet snake. Plus there's an excruciating Christmas party scene showing their reduced circumstances: where once they might have had a full orchestra providing the entertainment, now it's just their maid dressed up in a low-rent reindeer costume.

The camera is there to watch as the maid wriggles into the costume before stepping out to play her part as festive entertainer for the assembled guests. This is one of many moments when Greenfield widens her gaze beyond the Siegels themselves to look more closely at those in their orbit - a feature of the film I really appreciated. In so doing she very effectively both illustrates, and comments on, the deeply uncomfortable disparity between the Siegels' lifestyle, even when they are financially 'challenged', and that of the people close to them.

We see one of the nannies talking movingly about how much she loves the Siegel children whilst also acknowledging the pain of being separated from her own children for so many years. A maid proudly shows us around the home she's created for herself, with Jackie's blessing, in one of the children's discarded outdoor playhouses . And we see Jackie visiting her small home town back in New York state and meeting up with an old school friend whose life took a very different trajectory from hers and is now in foreclosure on her own, very modest, home.

And yet somehow, through it all, we never completely lose sympathy for the Siegels, especially Jackie who seems genuinely kind-hearted, despite being coddled, at times ludicrously so, by the luxury life she's become accustomed to.

Even David, who could all too easily have come across as a kind of pantomime villain, is painted as a more complex figure, unwilling or unable to comprehend how he is as much an architect of the ‘riches-to-rags story’ (his words) he now finds himself in, as he is a victim.1

His comedown - from billionaire bragging about helping George W. Bush take the White House to cranky father carping at his family for not turning the lights off - is palpable. And it can’t have been any easier for happening under the glare of Greenfield’s camera.

The documentary won the US Director Award at Sundance in 2012 and deservedly so. It's a thoughtful and at times biting critique of the excesses of the American Dream and at the same time simply a hugely entertaining watch, with an incredibly compelling titular character (well over a decade since I last watched the film I still had vivid images of Jackie in my mind which I was delighted to revisit when I rewatched it for this post).

Beyond the end credits

Reading about the film again, I was reminded that the Siegels actually sued Greenfield for defamation before it was released, though it seems the bad blood was mainly on David’s side as Jackie attended the Sundance premiere and several other screenings, and the lawsuit was ultimately dismissed. But I wondered what had become of them in the years since.

A quick internet search revealed tragedy - the death of their daughter Victoria to a prescription drug overdose aged just 18 - but also staying power. Since the original documentary, they’ve appeared in several reality shows and in 2022, Discovery+ launched a 6 part reboot series, Queen of Versailles Reigns Again which sees Jackie, a by-now-nearly-90-year-old David and their grown up kids still trying to get their ill-fated, (allegedly) $100million, mega-mansion finished. The reviews I’ve seen don’t compare especially favourably with the 2012 original…

And perhaps most surprisingly, this summer saw the stage debut, in Boston, of The Queen of Versailles the musical, which is apparently set to move to Broadway in 2025.

It seems to this day people still can’t get enough of the indefatigable Siegels. But for the real deal, don’t miss the original documentary. At the time of writing, it’s streaming for free on the BBC iPlayer for those in the UK or you can watch in on Hulu in the US, or on various free streamers like The Roku Channel & Tubi TV. Or it’s widely available for rent in most of the usual places.

I’d love to know if you watched this film and if you did - what did you think of it? Comments are open below or just hit REPLY if you’re reading over email.

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Proudly taking part in the Sparkle on Substack 24 essays club – this is post number 22.

Watch my film on Netflix (in Europe) or Vimeo (everywhere else) - or see trailer, reviews & bonus content HERE

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Life stories website – coming soon...

“In feature films the director is God; in documentary films God is the director.” - Alfred Hitchcock

I have a lot of passions but one that's remained pretty consistent through the whole of my adult life is my passion for documentary films.

I'm lucky to live in a country with both public and private broadcasters who've historically appreciated and supported documentary as a form - and I grew up watching a cornucopia of factual programmes shown by the UK’s terrestrial channels on the BBC, ITV and Channel 4.

So it was a dream come true when I managed to get a job and begin to forge a career working in TV documentaries myself, at the end of the ‘90s and on into the ‘00s.

And as I learnt more about the craft, skill and care that went into creating documentaries, through working on them myself, I was also having my eyes opened as to the full scope of what non-fiction films could be and do.

“one of the amazing things about documentary is that you can remake it every time you make one. There is no rule about how a documentary film has to be made” - Errol Morris

This was a time in which documentaries weren't just a regular feature on our TV screens, but were breaking through in a big way at the box office too – the 'docbuster era' as I've seen it dubbed.

In the early and mid 2000s, more documentaries than ever before were appearing in cinemas – and drawing record-breaking audiences. Two films from this period - Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 in 2004 and March of the Penguins the following year - have, astonishingly, both taken over $100 million at the box office worldwide.

But this was also a boom time for watching films at home. Global DVD sales peaked in 2005 and video rentals were being swiftly overtaken by newer, online DVD-by-mail services like pre-streaming-era Netflix and, in Europe, LoveFilm, which had 1.4 million customers at the peak of its popularity in 2008.

I was one of those customers and for 6 or 7 years, until the service got swallowed up by Amazon, I rented scores of incredible DVDS, from classics of celluloid history to indie, arthouse and foreign language films and, of course, documentaries.

Since then, documentaries have continued to grace our screens in cinemas, on television and, in more recent years, on the ever growing proliferation of streamers and other other online platforms. The choice is quite frankly dizzying for a documentary fan like me (as I type this I’ve got 76 episodes of the BBC’s feature doc strand Storyville alone recorded and ready to watch on my DVR - never mind all my watchlists elsewhere!)

Over the years, I've watched documentaries that have delighted me, thrilled me, moved me, educated me, filled me with awe - and with outrage, made me laugh out loud and want to get up and dance, introduced me to people, places and times I might never have experienced and posed questions I'd have never otherwise considered.

“We believe that the materials and the stories taken from the raw can be finer (more real in the philosophic sense) than the acted article. - John Grierson

And now I have my very own little corner of the internet here on Substack, I want to use it to celebrate and share some of the very best of these films with you in an ongoing series of posts that will gradually build into what I hope will prove to be a useful and inspiring library.

HOW IT WORKS

I've opted for the the tried and tested format of an A-Z, with this post serving as my master list.

I absolutely reserve the right to add to this list as and when any other favourites pop into my head that I can't believe I haven't included!

Or if I watch something new which instantly catapults itself into the category of favourite 🤩

But some possible changes and additions aside, this is the lodestar. And with this master list as my guiding light, my plan is to write companion posts for each film, with some background and context, an overview of the story and characters and why it’s made it onto my list of favourites.

As I slowly write these companion posts (which I should add, I do not intend to do in alphabetical order but merely as the fancy takes me and not on any particular schedule) I will add the links into this master post for easy navigation. For films I originally watched a long time ago, I will aim to rewatch if I can - though availability isn’t always guaranteed outside of the films I already personally own on DVD…

MY CRITERIA

I'm confining this project to single, feature length documentaries (ie with a running time of greater than 1 hour minimum), which were originally released in cinemas, on television or on a streamer. This obviously excludes many terrific short docs and documentary series, but I'm sure I'll write about some of those elsewhere.

I'm also using a broad definition of documentary to include pretty much any type of non-fiction film, including hybrid docu-dramas, essay films, animated and all-archive documentaries and plenty more besides.

By its nature, this is a very partial list favouring my own personal tastes – these are films that have left a particular impression on me. It's certainly not intended as any kind of definitive 'best of' list. Plus, as already mentioned, it's heavily dependent on the vagaries of my memory – there are very likely films I absolutely love that aren't on this list simply cos I've forgotten about them just at this moment!

Looking through the titles, I can spy a few themes emerging. There's a definite tilt towards history and politics – perhaps not surprising given that my own debut feature doc is a sweeping slice of social & political history (they do say we make the films we want to watch ourselves, after all).

There are also films about culture (including film itself) and sport, films with really compelling characters at their heart, plus quite a number taking innovative or unexpected approaches to the documentary form itself.

There is also perhaps an overrepresentation of films from that early to mid 2000s period discussed above - as this was when I was really starting to discover the world of documentary beyond the standard TV fare I’d mostly been aware of until then. And there are also quite a lot of films from the past 5-10 years - recency bias is real I guess!

But what's also striking to me is what's not really present on the list – namely, true crime and big, celebrity profiles1 – aka, the kind of films that are most popular with broadcasters and funders right now.

Perhaps this mismatch between my tastes and those of the purse-holding gatekeepers of documentary goes some way to explain why I'm no longer working in TV docs in any meaningful way and have only got one independent feature doc under my belt despite having been in the industry for a quarter of a century?! But that’s a discussion for another day, I think…!

And also deserving of a fuller discussion elsewhere, but which I will at least touch on briefly now, is the overwhelming dominance of British & American, white, male directors in my list. I actually put all the titles into a spreadsheet (yes, that's just the kind of fun gal I am 😁) and was honestly a little shocked to see laid bare quite how few women and non-white directors were there - and how few films made somewhere other than the UK or US.

On a more positive note, there is notably more diversity in the more recent titles - reflective I hope not just of my own greater awareness of and attention to broadening my gaze, but also of an industry that’s doing some hard thinking about the kinds of stories and voices it lifts up.

There is a whole world out there - and documentaries are one of the most powerful ways I can think of to engage in it, with curiosity, empathy and, ultimately, a sense of our common humanity. I for one look forward to experiencing ever more new perspectives, for as long as documentary filmmakers are ready to provide them.

THE LIST

And so on that rather lofty note, without further ado, here are all the films in their fully alphabetised glory...

A – Apollo 19, The Arbor, The Aristocrats, Atomic Cafe, Attacking the Devil

B – Bank Job, Best of Enemies, Bombay Beach, Buena Vista Social Club, The Bridge, Bros: After the Screaming Stops

C – Capturing the Friedmans, Casting JonBenet, Collective, The Corporation

D – The Devil and Daniel Johnston, Dreams of A Life

E – The End of the Line, Enron: The Smartest Guy in the Room, Etre et Avoir

F – F for Fake, Finding Vivian Maier, Fire in the Blood, Flee, The Fog of War, Fourteen Days in May

G – Ghosts of Abu Ghraib, The Gleaners & I, Gorbachev. Heaven, Grey Gardens

H – Hearts & Minds, How to Survive a Plague

I – I Am Not Your Negro, I was a Soldier, Icarus, The Imposter, Irene's Ghost

J – The Janes, Jesus Camp, Jiro Dreams of Sushi

K – Kate Plays Christine, The Kid Stays in the Picture, Koyaanisqatsi

L – Let Me Be Me, Life, Animated, London

M – Man on Wire, Men Who Sing, Milisuthando

N – Notes on Blindness

O – Outfoxed, Out of the Ashes

P – The Painter & the Thief, Persepolis

Q – The Queen of Versailles, Quincy

R – Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project, Requiem for Detroit, Riotsville, USA, Robinson in Ruins, Robinson in Space

S – Sans Soleil, Searching for Sugar Man, Senna, Songbirds, Spellbound, Standing in the Shadows of Motown, The Story of the Weeping Camel, Summer of Soul

T – Three Minutes: A Lengthening, The Thin Blue Line, Time, The Times of Harvey Milk, Touching the Void, The Tower, A Town of Runners

U – Utopia

V – Versus: The Life & Films of Ken Loach

W – The War You Don't See, When We Were Kings, Who Killed the Electric Car, The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, Winged Migration, Wisconsin Death Trip

X – XY Chelsea

Y – The Yes Men, Young Plato

Z – Zidane : A 21^st Century Portrait

0-9 - 2020: The Story of Us, 32 Sounds

And there we have it. I’m excited to share more about these films with you over the coming months. And I’d love to hear from you too.

• Have you seen any of the docs on my list and if so, what dd you think of them?

• What other docs do you love? And why?

• Is there a particular scene or character from a documentary that’s lingered in your mind long after the credits rolled?

• Or maybe you watched a documentary in a memorable location or in unusual circumstances?

Whatever documentary-related thoughts or stories you feel like sharing, I’d love to hear them - and I’m sure others would too.

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THE POSTS

The Oscar Project

K is for Koyaanisqatsi

Today I decided to do something a little different and invite a fellow substacker to join in on the challenge and write about the film. Back in early August as I was prepping for this series, Vicki Lesley wrote a list of some of her favorite documentaries on her substack…

Read more

2 years ago · 5 likes · 2 comments · Jonathan Ytreberg and Vicki Lesley

Proudly taking part in the Sparkle on Substack 24 essays club – this is post number 18.

Watch my film on Netflix (in Europe) or Vimeo (everywhere else) - or see trailer, reviews & bonus content HERE

Find me on X & LinkedIn

Life stories website – coming soon...