Shades (1982)

If you were a fan of post-apocalyptic nuclear fiction in the first half of the 1980s, you were absolutely spoiled. From The Day After through to Threads and onto When the Wind Blows, it felt as though a full-scale attack of harrowing nuclear dramas were raining down from the heavens. And it was a reflection of a much wider public consciousness, one which was being drip fed a diet of fear through a very real nuclear arms race and the harsh reality of Protect & Survive.

No one truly knew what the future held. Would we be reduced to eating a diet of rats and radioactive sheep as imagined in Threads? Hopefully not. But when the bomb dropped, we did know one thing: we were going to be eating a diet of rats and radioactive sheep. Perhaps, though, there would be an alternative. Maybe the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) would work, and nuclear weapons would be no more. Or, as suggested by Stephen Lowe’s Shades, we’d simply learn to forget about the whole thing.

Shades was part of the Play for Tomorrow series, a spin-off from the long running BBC anthology series Play for Today. The aim of Play for Tomorrow was, as BBC producer Neil Zeiger told Television Today, very simple:

“All the productions cover aspects of life which relate very much to the present day. And the irony is that although they are called Plays (sic) for Tomorrow they are really more Plays for Today. They pose questions about the future and how we can shape it, but these are questions that ought to be attended to now.”

Six editions of Play for Tomorrow were produced, with Shades being sandwiched in-between Tom McGrath’s The Nuclear Family and series closer Easter 2016, written by Graham Reid. However, despite a prime Tuesday evening slot on BBC1, Play for Tomorrow failed to create an impact, and its legacy barely registers on the geiger-counter of the public’s memory.

But this doesn’t mean it failed to meet Zeiger’s lofty claims. And Shades, in particular, looks an intriguing play, all dystopian future, nuclear bombs and youth culture. It sounds almost too good to be true, but does it actually have anything to say?

The year is 1999, and nuclear war has been averted. Or, at least, the government have convinced the public to put it at the back of their minds in a radioactive-proof box. The youth, once they have finished school, now find themselves herded together in youth apartments, high-rise flats financed and furnished by the government. And they appear to be a lot of fun. Boasting state-of-the-art virtual reality equipment - a pair of shades - which allows you to live out your every fantasy, what more could a young person want?

Well, they want to party obviously. That’s why, in-between indulging in virtual pornography and motor racing, they hold socials. And the protagonists at the heart of Shades have decided on a 1980s theme for their upcoming social, with an emphasis on the antics of the ‘psycho-masochists’ who comprised the CND. These people, history and the government have proved, were mentally ill, wasting all their time worrying about a nuclear threat which was never going to erupt.

Sheena (Tracey Childs), however, becomes fixated by a young demonstrator in one of the film reels she’s been using to research the CND. And she becomes even more engrossed in the rhetoric of anti-nuclear advocate Helen Caldicott. This isolates Sheena from her young neighbours, who laugh off her worries around nuclear war. But her curiosity grows stronger and, as the words of a Caldicott lecture echo around her bedroom, she slips into a dream set in the early 1980s.

Sheena is now Angie, and all her friends have also assumed new identities. Most striking of all is the fact they’re all psycho-masochists, preparing for a CND march. However, Sheena/Angie feels conflicted again. She rallies against the march, mocking it as pointless and falling into an a depressive sulk. Soon, she’s back in 1999, again questioning the world, seemingly in turmoil with her emotions.

On the face of it, Shades has the air of a J.G Ballard novel, shot through with the dystopian menace of George Orwell. And it has a prescience to it, what with the rise in recent years of virtual reality equipment and Mark Zuckerberg’s proposed Metaverse. It also possesses a futuristic-look-which-only-the-1980s-could-predict with its shiny leisurewear and minimalist luxury. Sounds fascinating, right? Sadly, it’s a game of two halves.

Exactly what Stephen Lowe is poking at in Shades is never clear. Is it a commentary on how inherently submissive we are? Are a few shiny distractions all we need to fall into line and become apathetic? Is nuclear holocaust inevitable? Should we all just immerse ourselves in a fantasy world and let the fallout of nuclear war finish us off? Perhaps, as Sheena’s friends suggest, there is no government conspiracy, and she’s simply letting her personal life cloud her judgement.

Lowe, of course, was a great believer in peace, and in 1985 he would edit Peace Plays, an anthology published by Methuen which focused on themes of hope in the face of the ongoing Cold War. This was followed up in 1990 with Peace Plays: Two, so it’s clear that Lowe was on the side of the psycho-masochists. Shades, therefore, could represent his frustrations with the public’s reluctance to adopt the CND movement on a wider scale. And Sheena is being used as a conduit for Lowe’s angst.

Maybe it’s all of these things, but Lowe fails to set out the intentions of his play, and as the social segues into the credits, you’re left feeling underwhelmed. It’s as if you’ve been cheated out of a more rewarding narrative. The bones of a masterpiece are here, the problem is that the journey is muddled and off-course when it needs to be laser guided. It could have been Lowe’s definitive contribution to British television, the moment he was declared the new Nigel Kneale. He just needed to tighten the screws on the casing.

You could argue that the end result of Shades is intentional, almost satirical. Distracted by the spectacle and fantasy of television, we become immune to the real world. And Lowe is more than keen to spoon-feed us this apathy. But we still need a pay-off. Threads has one, and boy does it have one. Here, it’s sadly lacking. So, Shades, it promises so much, but falls short of its target.