I didn't see it at the time, but watched it later as a repeat, maybe in my 20s (early 2000s). I think I was sort of frozen in a speechless bleakness after it. I thought about it a lot over the coming days. "All this could be lost in the blink of an eye, if these wars keep escalating" (if was probably mid Bush/Blair war). I found it deeply unsettling (in an important way).

It's lack of high budget flair just made it bleakly realistic. Also, the setting in Sheffield rather than "down south" or wherever made it far more realistic (as someone from Yorkshire) - it was "normal people with normal accents", talking about normal everyday worries, like a gritty soap opera - like watching something like Coronation Street, but then they get nuked and you watch them all die slowly of radiation poisoning.

I think it's a classic, and I think it's of great cultural importance and that everyone should watch it at some point in their lives, especially politicians.

I'm normally scared of remakes, but yeah - if they remade a 21st century equivalent and it had a similar impact on today's young people, that'd be a good thing.