Made in the 80s: The Decade That Shaped Our World

BBC One
★★★★★ Mail on Sunday | Documentary of the Day – Radio Times
Pick of the Day – The Guardian | Critic’s Choice – Times Weekend

Through the eyes of a handful of Brits, this is the extraordinary story of how the country was forged from the fires of division and conflict, only to reinvent itself and take the rest of the world with it.​

Part 1: Cold War

With the threat of nuclear Armageddon dominating politics and seeping into the country’s psyche, a handful of Brits influence the Cold War in ways no-one could have imagined.

From the ad men who shaped the tastes of the nation before triumphing in Hollywood, to the women who face down the American military and a spy who saves us from oblivion, Part One pieces together the story of how Britain’s internal divisions influenced the course of world history.

Part 2: Culture Wars

From the flames of conflict and scars of social division, a cultural explosion changes not just the attitudes of the country, but the world.

As unrest and a mysterious pandemic grip the country, nobody is happy with the status quo particularly those who feel excluded by its old values. New stars, new art, and even a new TV channel is born with risk in its DNA. From Hanif Kureishi to Holly Johnson Part Two charts the meteoric rise of the disrupters who put a very different Britain on the world map.

Part 3: Silicon Brittania

When Thatcher’s Britain replaces coal with computers, Britain’s tech-driven reboot triumphs thanks to university geeks and a bedroom army of games designers.

The inside story of how some very clever minds, a slice of luck and a bit of outright deception shaped the world we live in today. In Cambridge a chance discovery leads to the creation of a chip so powerful it found its way into billions of mobile phones and perhaps even saved Apple from going under.  A new generation of computer-literate kids build the foundations for an industry now worth $235 billion and Tim Berners Lee stakes a claim for the biggest discovery of all.

Broadcast Details

Episode one of this series will be broadcast on:
Monday 24th October 2022 at 9pm.

Credits

Series Director Simon Gilchrist
Produced by Pandora Monnas, Alisha Patel
Executive Producer James Rogan, Soleta Rogan

G629P3 Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher greets fashion designer Katharine Hamnett, wearing at-shirt with a nuclear missile protest message, at 10 Downing Street, where she hosted a reception for British Fashion Week designers.
Frankie Goes To Hollywood, studio group portrait, London, March 1984, L-R Peter Gill, Paul Rutherford, Brian Nash, Mark O’Toole, Holly Johnson. (Photo by Michael Putland/Getty Images)
British inventor and entrepreneur, Clive Sinclair pictured holding a Sinclair MTV1 Microvision pocket TV in London on 10th January 1977. (Photo by United News/Popperfoto via Getty Images/Getty Images)
British band Frankie Goes to Hollywood (L-R) Paul Rutherford, Holly Johnson, Mark O’Toole, Peter Gill and Brian Nash (in front) photographed circa 1984. (Photo by John Stoddart/Popperfoto via Getty Images
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher shares a joke with American President Ronald Reagan, at No. 10 Downing Street, London. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)
President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher walk Reagan’s dog Lucky on the White House lawn. (Photo by Jim Hubbard/Bettmann Archive via Getty Images)