Underplayed Gems

The Day Britain Stopped (2003)

The Day Britain Stopped poster
Directed by
Gabriel Range
Genre
pseudo-documentary
Country
United Kingdom
Runtime
1h 30m
Rating
6.2 of 10 from 4 voters
Elsewhere
IMDb
The 3D catalogue: film cases on wooden shelves, with the cat sitting at the counter next to its greeting.

The catalogue in 3D

The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this film is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.

More films like this

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)

More like this

This page is from Underplayed Gems. Not quite it? You can browse by genre, country and year, or take this one into the 3D catalogue and ask the Catbot for something closer.