Long before the vogue for “found footage” films, Edward Zwick directed the television one-off Special Bulletin (broadcast on 20 March 1983) that features only a few seconds of “found footage” (shaky 8mm footage taken by a witness) but is otherwise a fine example of that related form, the faux news broadcast (see also Countdown to Looking Glass (1984), Without Warning (1994) et al). The illusion was somewhat ruined in the States when it was broadcast with a disclaimer that popped up at the end of every ad break assuring viewers that what they were watching wasn’t actually happening along with the word “dramatization” flashing up on screen every so often – such precautions were missing from the subsequent UK television broadcast.

A trailer for upcoming programs on the fictional RBS television station in New York is cut short by a “special bulletin” card. News anchors John Woodley (Ed Flanders) and Susan Myles (Kathryn Walker) report that a gunfight has broken out between Coast Guards and the crew of a tugboat in Charleston, South Carolina, an exchange captured by local reporter Steven Levitt (Christopher Allport) and his cameraman who are taken hostage by the terrorists. With a live link set up, the group – Dr Bruce Lyman (David Clennon), Dr David McKeeson (David Rasche), poet and political activist Frieda Barton (Rosalind Cash), Diane Silverman (Roberta Maxwell) and the unstable Jim Seaver (Ebbe Roe Smith) – issue their demands. They want the triggers for every nuclear device in the area to be delivered to them in 24 hours or they will detonate the nuclear bomb that they’ve built in the hold of the ship. Investigations reveal that Lyman and McKeeson have a background in nuclear physics and that a quantity of plutonium had been stolen several months earlier. Meg Barclay (Roxanne Hart) continues to broadcast from the scene as relations on board the ship begin to break down. She and a freed Levitt are on hand to witness a military team storming the tug and members of NEST (Nuclear Emergency Search Team) attempt to defuse the bomb. But McKeeson has booby trapped the device leading to a devastating nuclear detonation that destroys Charleston.

Special Bulletin delivers a multi-pronged attack on the dangers of nuclear weapons, the hazards of woolly-headed protest that gets out of hand and the complicity of the media in the stories that they’re covering. RBS’ coverage ranges from the banal to the desperate and self-serving. Even as the media hype starts to unravel as events unfold, you can sense the hosts eyeing a Pulitzer behind their slick presentation. By the time an angry threatens to detonate the bomb, Myles and Woodley are seriously out of their depth, their polished façade starting to slip as they slowly start to realise the scale of what they’re reporting on. Out in the field, Barclay gets it a bit quicker, nervously noting when asked if she was safe having been moved away from the ship that “no-one will say, actually…”

By agreeing to the terrorists’ demands they contribute to the chaos and their complicity is called out by McKeeson who accuses the media of being show business, railing against their vapid presentation: “It never cease to amaze me, the ability of the news media to trivialise any event of any significance, any meaning…” McKeeson tries to call their bluff, goading them into giving up what he believes are RBS’ exclusive access to the live feed (he’s wrong as it turns out), offering them a chance to prove that their coverage isn’t just part of a race for ratings. But no matter what he or anyone else says, the news media were never going to let go of a once in generation ratings boost like this. Though things may be unfolding fast but nothing gets in the way of ad breaks and the special ends with the news cycle starting to move on after just three days, the horrors inflicted on Charleston already slipping from the public’s consciousness to be replaced by the latest outrage.

Elsewhere, politicians are again portrayed as ineffectual, slow to respond and quite clueless as to the enormity of the events unfolding around them. Subsequent real-life disasters in the US – from Hurricane Katrina to 9/11 (the twin towers of the World Trade Center are visible in the backdrop in the newsroom) – have proved that Special Bulletin wasn’t exaggerating. If anything, it was underplaying the efficacy of the authorities as here they do at least manage to storm the ship successfully even if the aftermath is staggeringly catastrophic.

The group are clearly dangerous and deluded but their aims are laudable even if their behaviour is dangerous and massively irresponsible. But they’re not the stereotypical terrorist that we were already becoming used to seeing in Hollywood film and television – they’re traumatised by the death of the one of the Coasts Guards they attacked when they first docked. They’re intelligent, committed and passionate if varying degrees of emotionally damaged but they’re certainly not stereotypes.

The drama is nicely performed but a cast whose familiarly should have been enough to tip off viewers as to the veracity of the proceedings (a young Michael Madsen turns up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-him small role.) Ed Flanders is perfect as the slick “dean of RBS,” Myles bringing emotional depth to her role and the rest buying into the concept with the earnestness needed to make the illusion work.

Special Bulletin a clever, witty and often lacerating film that’s also smartly directed by Zwick – the scenes of the troops storming the ship is excitingly staged and the subsequent attempts by NEST to defuse the bomb are unbearably tense. The explosion itself and its aftermath (Barclay numbly picking shards of glass from the body of a colleague while realising that she’s probably been fatally irradiated) are genuinely shocking and moving. As a depiction of the horror of nuclear weaponry it lacks the grand scale of the same year’s The Day After and the raw brutality of Threads (1984) but it remains a very potent warning about allowing such technology to fall into the wrong hands.

Special Bulletin was nominated for six Emmy awards, winning four of them, including Outstanding Drama Special among many other awards. It caused quite the stir on its first broadcast and despite the on-screen reassurances (and the fact the story takes place over two days but the special only runs for 105 minutes) there were reports of localised panic in Charleston as viewers tuned in and fell for it.