​The Banned UK TV Show Too Bleak for Television That Left Two Dead.

Support us and get episodes early: https://www.patreon.com/c/AcceptableLosses
Join our Discord: https://discord.com/invite/nhX9NJ3EW7

Terraces was conceived in 1984 by Mick Jackson and Barry Hines as a predecessor to the famous post-apocalyptic movie Threads. It was a bleak, hopeless drama set in a Northern English terraced housing estate during the fallout of a Soviet-US nuclear exchange. The BBC deemed the script so repulsive and anti-Thatcher that they pulled the funding halfway through production.

Desperate to finish filming, the production company allegedly took private funding from a regional meat-packing conglomerate. Part of the contract stipulated that the set, crew, and lead actor of Terraces had to shoot a promotional commercial for British Pork. That viral, unsettling advertisement is actually the only surviving footage of the Terraces set.

If you look closely at the ad, the actor isn't playing a happy father; he is still entirely in character as the lead of the show, a murderer and a cannibal. The intense, unblinking eye contact, the aggressive way he wields the carving tools, and the stilted, unnatural delivery of lines like "Fred's got plenty... Arthur's got plenty" were written as a dark inside joke by the crew. The meat on the table was heavily rumored by the crew to be a prop from the show's butchery scene, not actual pork.

The most sinister part of the ad is the repeated, menacing line: "Got what it takes, my wife." Two weeks after the commercial aired on regional late-night television, the lead actor was found dead in his kitchen. His real-life wife, Helen, was arrested at the scene, but before she could stand trial, Helen died in police custody under highly contested circumstances, officially ruled as heart failure brought on by severe hysteria.

Following the deaths and controversy, the BBC panicked, locked the unfinished master tapes of Terraces in their archives, and scrubbed the names of the crew from their records. The British Pork ad was pulled, only surviving because a few people happened to record it on VHS.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:14

Welcome everyone to another episode of the Acceptable Losses Podcast. And today, kinda sorta like any other day, I have no idea what's going on. But Kyrie's here, Pancreas is here. What's going on, fellas? I'm excited. Massively excited.

SPEAKER_00 0:33

I'm intrigued. I'm confused. I I don't know what's coming.

SPEAKER_03 0:39

Me either. Well, that's that's the fun bit. That's the fun bit for this one. So, so this is something a little bit different. Um, you know, still still still main episode worthy, but perhaps shorter than than you might be used to. Uh obviously, the usual stuff applies if you want to support us on Patreon, patreon.com slash acceptable losses, and you get episodes early, you get exclusive episodes, all of that. This is something that me and Possum have been working on, and it's a bit of a surprise for for everyone but us. So today we are going to be heading into the dark world of a post-apocalyptic Britain and the terrifying denisms that lurk within in the form of a TV series that never actually made it to air. Now, DK, if you're immediately thinking that sounds a bit like threads, uh That does sound a bit like threads. I have both good and bad news for you. Oh no. In that it's not threads. Bad in that yeah, sort of sort of threads-esque. So this essentially is a series that was left on the cutting room floor in the form of scripts that were never fully utilized, numerous lost sort of pieces of film, and one piece of media that has been found, but is made only darker with the true context behind it. So back in 1982, the beginnings of a post-nuclear war TV series were already starting to appear among the few TV networks active in the UK at the time. While the threat of nuclear war was relatively severe during this period, there were always those among the heads of broadcasting at the major UK networks that felt the threat of nuclear obliteration was pretty clear at that time, and that the public would probably lap up any media that depicted the nightmare world that could only exist after a full-scale apocalyptic war. Again, sounds pretty similar, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:35

In very similar.

SPEAKER_03 2:39

Yep. Yep. So uh this essentially at this point, so began the filming of the show The Terraces, which is what appears at the top of the of the first page of the first script for the first episode. The terraces were set in a region of England that remained unspecific in the script itself, while some of the pronunciation within the main character's vocabulary was close to a southern English accent, the overall feel was that of a northern inhabitant. Somewhere between Northampton and Nottingham, it sort of suggests those stage instructions were clear, the men in the show were to properly represent the working class of the United Kingdom without being biased towards one region or another. Sort of reads like a bit of studio interference in a way, or like um like network interference of scribbled notes and the like. The Terraces was a series, sorry, show, I should be saying show, shouldn't I, that revolved around a family living in a vague area of the UK that nonetheless was familiar to a good chunk of the population, especially those crammed into the Victorian housing of the major cities. The series would show the everyday existence of these civilians in a landscape altered by the most violent outcome of the Cold War, a thin veneer of recognizable society disguising a horrifying truth. The UK had become a barbarous state where the rule of law was wholly absent and the people left to fend for themselves. Again, similarities, real similarities.

SPEAKER_02 4:08

Yeah, that's well, that sucks. That's yeah, that's you know, especially after so we just came off doing the Fallout 76 one, and boy, we're we're back into just horror horrible things change, the more they stay the same. Yeah. War never changes. Oh, wrong one, sorry.

SPEAKER_00 4:31

You know, if I was more clever, I'd have gone for that, but I'm not.

SPEAKER_03 4:37

The important thing is we get there in the end. That's the main thing. That's the in researching this, uh, Possum and myself have reason to believe that a good chunk of the script for this cancelled series was written by Mick Jackson, Barry Hines, and an otherwise unknown playwright by the name of Michael Henry Partridge. So Mick Jackson would go on to write the 1984 TV film Threads, which we've covered in a Patreon-only episode already. And uh if you if you follow the Patreon, then you get access to that episode. His credentials are pretty, pretty long, with Threads, LA Story, Volcano, and The Bodyguard being amongst the most notable.

SPEAKER_02 5:19

The bodyguard, like the like the the the the the popular 90s movie. The bodyguard. Yep. What's her face? Uh anyway, yeah, I know the movie you're talking about. Whitney Houston, yes. Yeah. Yeah. Crazy resume.

SPEAKER_03 5:35

And uh Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um Threads was set in Sheffield, as we know, and Barry Hines, the other co-writer, was known for writing not just that film, but a screenplay called Kez that also took place in Yorkshire, leaving some to speculate that the Terraces is in fact set in Sheffield as well. The playwright Michael Henry Partridge, as far as we can tell, only contributed to this one series, disappearing from public life when the cancellation of the terraces was announced to very little fanfare. The bosses at the network making this, ITV, were attempting to capitalise on something that at that time many believed would simply never come to pass, that of course being nuclear war on a global scale. And the fact that Mick Jackson and Barry Hines went on to make threads, and that became an extremely notorious film for how it was extremely graphic in its depictions of how bad that would be. I mean, they got there in the end, at least, sort of.

SPEAKER_02 6:35

So there's a chance that they made threads because terraces got cancelled and they really wanted to do that thing, and they were like, fuck it, I'll do it myself.

SPEAKER_03 6:45

Essentially, yeah. No, cool. So for decades the scripts for this series have remained buried, but literally in the last few weeks they were uncovered, displaying to the world a series so grim, dark, and gritty that UK TV at the time simply could not justify filming it, let alone broadcasting it. Like it's it's rough. The series begins with the man of the house. There's no name, that's just the name that's given to the character, and it's capital M and Capital H because you know that he is the man of the house. Um no name given outside of that, inviting a struggling traveller into his home. The stranger is greeted by the man's family, two healthy young boys and a woman with a poem typical of the time, who tend to be seated at the large dining room table, and the woman especially is rarely seen to move in this first episode. It largely consists of the man of the house conversing with the stranger, sharing tales of their jobs and experiences before the last war, with both men indicating that they served in the armed forces and making veiled references to the ceasefire. So, in further notes expanded on in the scripts themselves, the ceasefire refers to a point at which the UK, USA and USSR agreed to stop firing nuclear missiles at each other simply because to continue would see the removal of all human life from the planet. China, through means we're not privy to in the scripts, is seemingly not a concern, and Canada is referred to as the Dark Zone, which is ominous as hell. Harsh and up-to-date big space commentary is what we're going to be known for. France, Italy, and Spain are also mentioned, but only in pitying terms, and they are lumped together as what's left of the Europeans, which again pretty rough.

SPEAKER_02 8:53

That sucks.

SPEAKER_03 8:55

The painting then is bleak. Most of Europe is apparently in an extremely bad way. Canada is under some sort of eternal night, be it of the soul or potentially something more literal, and a normal family in a nonspecific sort of northern but not fully northern town is allowing a traveller dressed in, and I quote, filthy army surplus with a scar across his front into their home. Just as a note, a scar across his front? Like how how big is the scar? Is it the whole front of the dude?

SPEAKER_02 9:26

Yeah. Yeah, I don't I I I just imagine like a big long scar across his chest, but you know.

SPEAKER_03 9:35

It it doesn't sound great either way. Um Anyway, this this this stranger is permit is permitted to stay with the family for a short while, though every day after the first is noted to be filled with a quiet dread. The scripts make note of a severe but understated tension between the man of the house and his long suffering wife, a tension which would worryingly be explained by the court case that would follow the initial filming schedules and the death of said man in unfortunate circumstances. Anyway, we're we're getting ahead of ourselves here. While the interpersonal relationships between the cast members for this horror show series were not exactly wholesome and lovely, the script itself was a nightmare all on its own. This stereotypical Northern-ish family meant to echo the everyday life of so many in the UK at the time, was hiding a dark and poisonous secret. The regularity of their everyday existence was supplemented not just by those who sought shelter with them, but by the family itself, most notably by the body of the wife presented with such pride. This it gets so much worse. This revelation, like uh This revelation is unveiled in episode one. Episode one, like this is this is supposed to be a multi-series TV straight in.

SPEAKER_02 11:00

Right out of Jump Street, just crazy.

SPEAKER_03 11:04

This was supposed to be a multi-series TV show, and the first series was supposed to be six episodes long, and the very first episode had this revealed to be cannibal family eating their own mum slash wife. What the fuck? Like what what an insane way to start literally anything.

SPEAKER_02 11:27

Like I would suggest that's a that's a hell of a bomb to drop on on episode one is cannibal family eating mom slash wife.

SPEAKER_03 11:37

That's crazy. It's it's absolutely wild. So like the man of the house, according to the scripts, was a cannibal, a control freak, and a and this is in quotes, by the way, a frighteningly violent man who intimidated his sons into inaction while literally forcing them to eat meat carved from their mother. Like that that is insane messed up stuff. Even by today's standards, that's wild. This was 1980s.

SPEAKER_02 12:09

That's a criminal minds episode that barely flies today, let alone in the eighties.

SPEAKER_03 12:16

Absolutely, absolutely insane work. Um is one of the sort of things that caused this whole series to go astray, and for good reason. So ITV had commissioned something to demonstrate the horrors of nuclear war and the impact it could have on society. Instead, Michael Henry Partridge and his co-writers had produced something so incredibly disturbing that the chances of it getting past the censors were slim to nil. You see, this was written to be as much of a performance piece as it was an admittedly extremely weird and kind of fucked up piece of dramatic TV. The writers, apparently Michael especially, wanted to produce something all-encompassing, and that included blurring the line between fact and fiction. So it was decided that a group of adverts would be written, and they were filmed to air alongside the terraces, with one appearing before they had one appearing before actual legitimate ad breaks. Like this was on ITV, which is a private TV network, and they run off advertising. So, you know, every 15-20 minutes you'd get three minutes of ads or whatever. And so they decided that they would have these fake ads effectively before and after the legitimate ad breaks. So the scripts show everything from terrifying and surreal clips showing daily life in London after a nuclear apocalypse, interspliced with adverts that used actual real shops, like Sainsbury's, Thompson's, Matson Spencer's, and they also had their own fictional brands, with some of them being Dillman's, Fullers and Fuller's and Millets. So they had like actual real chains and companies and shops as part of their fake advert of a post-ruin Britain, I guess. Incre incredible and insane work. Yeah, that's uh that's crazy. It's one of the things that contributed to the the downfall of all of this. It's like the use of fully trademarked brand names, along with the untimely death of the actor playing the man of the house, made for a combination of disasters that ensured that the terraces would never make it past filming, let alone to air. So legal intervention and this feels so weird to say out loud, legal intervention from the companies whose names were used in these fake adverts, and the trial of the on-screen wife for her involvement in the man of the house's death would ensure that the terraces would only exist as a vague memory in script form.

SPEAKER_01 15:05

What the fuck? Alright.

SPEAKER_02 15:11

What a what a wild ride. I feel like this might actually be one of those instances of truth might be stranger than the fiction.

SPEAKER_03 15:21

It's I mean, when it comes to cursed productions.

SPEAKER_02 15:27

This was it was doomed from the get-go to never have a chance at making it. Also, the fact that they wrote this out and they were like, God, why didn't they want to air this? I just don't get it. Brother, you had to know. Yeah. It turns out Cheers was downright delightful by comparison. Her threads was like, golly. Like that's a walkthrough of tulips compared to episode one, Eat Your Mother.

SPEAKER_03 16:01

What? So the Sainsbury's and Thompsons would launch legal action against ITV in protest for their names being used without their consent in an advertising format. And a judge would funnily enough rule their complaint valid because you can't do that. No. Shocking.

SPEAKER_02 16:18

Ain't no way, brother.

SPEAKER_00 16:23

Sorry, go on. Sorry. You don't want your brand associated with the Eat Your Mom in Episode One show? That's that's that's no, that's not a good look.

SPEAKER_03 16:37

All the free publicity we gave you. You should be happy with spreading your name around. Come on. You didn't even have to pay for the advert. So your advert contains cannibalism. Well man look. Martins and Spencer similarly would make legal complaints, but they wouldn't make it to court. At the time they were famed for not advertising in any way, and so ITV just had to settle for an undisclosed sum. Now in the midst of these legal interventions occurring, the man of the house would be found dead. The documents concerning his death are patchy, with some lost to flooding. Suffice to say that he suffered some sort of accident that could be charitably described as unlikely but plausible. His actual real life wife is the same woman who played his fictional spouse, and she would be convicted and sentenced on the basis of involuntary manslaughter six months after his death was brought to light.

SPEAKER_02 17:37

Oh yeah, so uh uh what what did w what uh what happened?

SPEAKER_03 17:45

Well, shortly after this judgment was made, she would also be found dead due to a suspected heart attack, though no previous medical conditions were known. Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 17:56

Like again, can't stress enough. Yep. Yep, yep. That uh I don't I don't like it.

SPEAKER_00 18:10

This whole thing reads like one of those creepy pastas where you put in the sonic CD and then your best friend explodes, except it's real.

SPEAKER_02 18:21

Damn, man. So gosh. Is it isn't that what um cyanide pills do essentially? Like uh whenever there's a spy movie and they've got the the false tooth and they get captured and they just they crunch down on it. Isn't that essentially what uh what a cyanide pill will do? Well fake alleged I want to say not fake a heart attack because you you die, but like isn't that essentially what they uh paint those weird little teeth pills for?

SPEAKER_00 18:48

Allegedly.

SPEAKER_02 18:49

Allegedly, in Minecraft. Allegedly.

SPEAKER_00 18:52

In Terraria. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:56

So the studio executives already feeling concerned and unsettled by the extreme nature of the scripts provided to them, and the reality-blurring format of the series, and the legal intervention of real companies, plus, you know, the whole the wife seems to have in some way caused the guy's death, they they just pulled the plug. They wanted nothing to do with any of it.

SPEAKER_02 19:23

I mean, what choice do you have? Even if you can somehow get past like the legal stuff, and even if there was nothing nefarious about the husband and the wife, both of them dying is like, alright, this is just nope, nope. And then you add in questionable nature cause, yeah, and it's like, nah, dude, just just fucking burn this thing to the ground.

SPEAKER_03 19:51

Yeah. I would like nothing to do with this, please. Thank you very much. Yep. So the by the time they got rid of all of this, only one thing had been recorded and edited. And it would survive and end up being used as a commercial that would actually see the light of day. So it was it was written to be like a like a comedic segment revolving around the family of the man of the house. And his his presentation to the camera is like really strangely intense and dark. Lots of like eye contact with the camera, aggressive vocals, and while his children kind of speak a little bit, the wife doesn't say a word, and the camera placement is significant.

SPEAKER_02 20:43

Hasn't this isn't this a commercial that gets memed on all the time? I think I've seen this one, and it's really, really awkward.

SPEAKER_03 20:50

We oh we'll don't worry, we're gonna get to it. We're gonna get there. I think I think I've seen this. It's creepy. It it really is. Um so d this advert was to tie into the plot point of the first episode of The Terraces. Um, so a guest had been marked as being healthy, and the man of the house wanted the guest to, you know, grace the table, so to speak, with uh with a bit of leg meat, and the guest escaped, and he took it out on the wife. And like this this dark and kind of terrifying advert was shot first before anything else in the series. Then it just sat on a shelf for well over a year. Like they shot this before the disaster stuff happened. Then it just sat there, no one touched it, and it was just like left. It ended up being bought via auction, and someone then sent it, having like the the idea was effectively here's a bunch of tape, we're gonna wipe it, use it for something else. It was bought by a lower production company. I think it was like it was mentioned it's something like a starting company, so they weren't around for very long and they were essentially buying up old stock, buying up old equipment as a way to get into the industry proper. And they found this reel that had just been sat on a shelf in 1984. That company then uh sent it to the British British Farmers Association, which is you like mentioned by name but in a very specific way at the end of the ad. The British Farmers Association simply uh spliced the end of this film with a more upbeat and chirpy version of what was already on there. What was already on there made specific reference to effectively eating a person but the rest of the footage wasn't that clear cut so they simply took this advert, chopped off the end and put their own end to it. Now that literally got shown in 1984 as a legitimate advert when there's no context given when it's shown like but as to where it's come from why it was made it was just shown as a specific advert and this is the same year. It's shown in the same year that BBC2 aired threads which is such a weird such a weird link.

SPEAKER_02 23:25

And uh I actually have I have that right here so I'll put it into discord and then if we all if we all hit play at the same time so if I do a little countdown three two one play God this is the this is the one I was thinking of that that was that was the one I was thinking it was oh and I I hate to see it again that got memeed on a lot I I don't I don't remember if it was like three or four years ago that commercial was making the rounds and everybody was like look at this fucking creepy British commercial the fuck is wrong with these guys little did we know the back story little did I know I would find out the shocking origins of said creepy commercial Oh boy.

SPEAKER_03 24:18

So yeah yeah here we are talking about a failed series and a weird advert literally over 40 years later uh as we can see creepy as hell the uh the only the only sort of like shining light amidst all of this is uh is that yeah almost none of what I said was true and uh I'm gonna be putting this out on the channel on April 1st. I will find you Kirioth I am I am I am looking for direct flights to be London to be fair Mickey Jackson and Barry Hines did write threads that's true um nothing else literally nothing else is uh Michael Henry Partridge doesn't exist that's a name made up from three comedians' names and uh I was I first heard about that advert from their podcast um so that was just a nice little a nice little shout out to them for making me aware of it but uh yeah uh none of that is accurate apart from the fact that those two guys wrote threads the rest of it I I simply made up and possum edited it for me.

SPEAKER_02 25:29

Can can we all so I I appreciate a good April Fool's Day joke aside from the fact that my knuckles are white with rage. Not only that, but now I fully understand why you fuckers wanted to do this after the Fallout 76 episode because you're like well it's gonna be like a two and a half hour episode they're gonna be kind of like spent already they're not really gonna question this sounds like some sort of pseudo fallout nonsense they're they're they're they're gonna be receptive to this and we're gonna link it to threads just release that on the following it all connects I will find you possum you're part of this I so uh DK you want to go make our own podcast yeah well no no you you it it no we don't have to make a new one we just suddenly only have two people on this one from the what happens and we're now accepting applications for a new researcher uh look we look we're it'll be the first April 1st we've ever had so I thought we'd I thought we'd do some you know that was that was pretty good. That was and fully believable too after after you know the egg is on my face with the creepy commercial too I fully believed I was like oh yeah I could totally see that being like some sort of like a uh strange advert for you know what would have been a show about cannibalism.

SPEAKER_03 27:04

I was like yeah I've seen this creepy commercial yeah you you know yeah this was supposed to air as like a creepy homage to like man eating wife yep cracks the thing is the entire basis of all of that script like all of those lies the creepy commercial was the commercial because it it reads so heavily that he's eating his own wife you know what with that as context you could absolutely say that that's what happened and you know if you're if you're in the moment talking about it and and aren't able to furiously google things as shy was um there's yes it's just so creepy and weird that it's not the most insane explanation for that which is also so the live chat's probably like how did you not see this coming it's April 1st it's March 18th right now.

SPEAKER_00 27:55

It is not April 1st for us.

SPEAKER_03 27:57

There's not even a hint of April Fool's Day shenanigans it's March 18th this is crazy this is this crazy setup right well when we were when we were looking at recording dates and stuff and when when Pancreas could do this one but not the next one I was like oh well I kind of I really want Pancreas to be in for this one so if we tack it on to the end of a recording and it's the fallout one oh it's it's that's gotta be the date but I do accept that it is several weeks early so crazy. I'm glad I was wanted for this so I could be it's been it's been a torturous two and a half hours for Pancreas forced to sing lyrics to songs that he doesn't know and then lie to and gaslift for 30 minutes.

SPEAKER_02 28:44

Man Pangreas has never come back he's like wipe my face off of every episode I'm done with you erase me I got out the ante so I think I'm gonna you know let's I'll record something on April 1st and I think I'm just gonna get a soundboard of a gunshot and then mute my mic for the rest of the day. Oh also Shy has been having a conversation with Possum like uh so we're recording the secret script right now and uh how convenient there's literally nothing about this on the internet you have firsthand info I see I Shy was onto it because Shy was Googling like oh yeah I want to find some picture of this I want to find some context to this this is all crazy and it's like why is there nothing?

SPEAKER_03 29:31

So Shy was probably onto this much I could not think of a way to be like Shy don't get pictures for this there aren't any because they would just be like what the fuck are you talking about?

SPEAKER_02 29:43

Absolutely not it's it's blank uh well apparently happy April Fool's Day everyone coming to you live from March 18th yeah it's the it's the best it's the best way to pull an April Fool's prank to record the month not April not April this is a March 18th day prank anyway uh you know I I my hat's off to you that's that's pretty fucking good you you sufficiently got me I was I was convinced this was real yep now that being the case since you did all that you have to do all of the outro oh no okay well uh well firstly pancreas you want to shout yourself out I'm pancreas no work and I don't know where I'm going with this that's kind of all I have that's that's me that's me you you look that up you find me also that is just my Xbox gamer tag but I will ignore your friend request it's important to set boundaries uh I was gonna say DK do you want to shout yourself out but you're you're here and you do this and the other podcast we do which I mean you can if you want to but people don't know they might not know. You stream on Twitch I feel like if you're here you know about the other one and it's also yeah I I I guess I do Twitch but that's the same name.

SPEAKER_03 31:18

You know how to nice and easy right thank you very much uh for listening everyone and those of you who got it early and stuck it out all the way through just to hear the the conclusion I salute you and if you got fooled by it I'm glad. I w I've spent too much time on writing that more time than I should have done.

SPEAKER_00 31:38

So if it was at least entertaining I'm happy I want it no like you wouldn't the moment you said and by the way it's anywhere like I just looked at my screen for a minute and I was just like did I did I mishear that? Did I I is is Discord fucking me over again?

SPEAKER_02 31:52

No it wasn't it wasn't the passage of time has has made it so that you missed the last week two weeks almost yeah that's that's just how long the fallout episode took all right see you next week for something that's hopefully true Kirioth If that's even your real name