The Day Britain Stopped (2003)

Directed by

Gabriel Range

Genre

pseudo-documentary

Country

United Kingdom

Runtime

1h 30m

Rating

6.2 of 10 from 4 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

This pseudo-documentary imagines a single day when a train strike triggers a chain of failures across Britain's transport network. The story uses news reports and real footage to show how the system collapses into a deadly crisis.

tensebleakfaux-urgentdramaticspeculativegrittydisaster-focusedsomber

What happens

The Day Britain Stopped is a dramatic pseudo-documentary produced by Wall to Wall Media for the BBC. It depicts a fictional disaster on 19 December 2003, in which a train strike is the first in a chain of events that lead to a fatal meltdown of Britain's transport system. Directed by Gabriel Range, who wrote the script with producer Simon Finch, the film first aired on Tuesday, 13 May 2003, on BBC Two. The drama makes use of various British television news services and newsreaders (such as Sky News and Channel 4 News), foreign news channels (such as France's TF1), radio stations (BBC Radio 5 Live), real-life archival footage (from a train crash site, a speech by Prime Minister Tony Blair and various stock footage of British traffic congestion) and cameo roles by well-known British personalities. Accompanying music includes excerpts from the film soundtracks of The Shawshank Redemption, The Sum of All Fears, Requiem for a Dream, Heat, and 28 Days Later. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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