| Genre: | Drama Docufiction Pseudo-documentary |
| Director: | Gabriel Range |
| Narrated: | Tim Pigott-Smith |
| Composer: | Alan O'Duffy |
| Country: | United Kingdom |
| Language: | English |
| Producer: | Simon Finch |
| Runtime: | 90 minutes |
| Channel: | BBC Two |
| Related: | The Man Who Broke Britain Heatwave |
The Day Britain Stopped is a dramatic pseudo-documentary produced by Wall to Wall Media for the BBC. It depicts a fictional disaster on December 19, 2003, in which a train strike is the first in a chain of events that lead to a fatal meltdown of Britain's transport system. Directed by Gabriel Range, who wrote the script with producer Simon Finch, the film first aired on Tuesday, May 13, 2003, on BBC Two.
The drama makes use of various British television news services and newsreaders (such as Sky News and Channel 4 News), foreign news channels (such as France's TF1), radio stations (Radio Five Live), real-life archival footage (from a train crash site, a speech by Prime Minister Tony Blair and various stock footage of British traffic congestion) and cameo roles by well-known British personalities. Accompanying music includes excerpts from the film soundtracks of The Shawshank Redemption, The Sum of All Fears, Requiem for a Dream, Heat, and 28 Days Later.
In early December 2003, 18 months after the Potters Bar rail accident, a fatal train accident near Waverley in Edinburgh leads the ASLEF and RMT trade unions to declare a strike for 19 December on safety grounds, forcing the heavy Christmas rail passenger traffic to use the roads instead.
On 19 December, a crossover accident on the M25 motorway leads to closure of the motorway in both directions, also blocking the M23. A diversion is opened, but a lack of coordination between the Highways Agency and Surrey Police means that the route is quickly gridlocked due to roadworks. A chemical tanker jackknifes near Heathrow Airport, completely paralysing the southern half of the M25. The first death occurs when an ambulance carrying a patient injured by the first accident runs out of medicine.
British airspace runs over capacity, forcing air traffic controllers to work double and triple shifts. Jerry Newell, a pilot for British Airways caught in the gridlock, opts to walk to Heathrow, where he is to captain a flight to Toulouse. Birmingham and Manchester are rendered unreachable by road, causing a planned friendly match between Turkey and England at Old Trafford to be cancelled due to low attendance.
Julian Galt, his wife and two children are driving to Heathrow for a Christmas holiday in Bilbao, and end up trapped on the M25. Numerous people try to escape the motorway in their cars or on foot, but are apprehended and forced to turn back by officers of the Thames Valley Police. As night falls, Julian's family convince him to lead them off the motorway and towards Heathrow; he sneaks them past the police to a minor road, where they flag down a passing minibus, but Julian opts to stay behind. The freezing temperatures become deadly as motorists succumb to hypothermia. In an attempt to gain control of the crisis, Operation Gridlock is enacted, instructing those trapped to leave their vehicles and make their way to field hospitals established on nearby land for triage.
In Heathrow's control tower, air traffic controller Nicola Evans volunteers to work late when her replacement fails to arrive for the start of their shift. Overworked, she accidentally directs an Aer Lingus flight to taxi onto a runway which is about to be landed on by a Czech Airlines cargo flight. Conflicting instructions are given by the other controllers. After agonising over what action to take, Evans issues a go-around instruction to the cargo flight, which avoids the Aer Lingus plane but collides with the departing British Airways flight to Bilbao, killing everyone on both planes instantly. Burning wreckage falls across Hounslow, destroying swathes of the town and starting massive fires. Heathrow shuts down, followed by the rest of the UK's airspace shortly thereafter.
Jane, Jerry Newell's wife, manages to make it to her home in Shepperton, and sees news of the air crash on the television. She begins making calls to find out her husband's whereabouts, and is briefly calmed when she learns that Jerry was not scheduled to captain the flight involved in the disaster. However, she then receives a phone call from British Airways, telling her that Jerry's flight to Toulouse was cancelled, and he was reassigned to the doomed flight, dying in the crash. Julian's family also perished in the disaster, as they reached the airport in time to board the flight.
In the wake of the disaster, Nicola Evans and the other air traffic controllers are charged with multiple manslaughter. However, the case against them collapses when the investigation into the air crash finds that systemic failures in Britain's air traffic control were to blame. The final death toll of the air crash is 87: 64 passengers and crew, and 23 people on the ground. There were also five deaths from hypothermia on the motorways, and eight other deaths.[1]
Tim Pigott-Smith provided the narration.[2] Katie Derham, Charlotte Green, Philip Hayton, John Humphrys, Gary Lineker, Anna Rajan, Jon Snow and Kirsty Young appeared as themselves.
Archive footage of Prime Minister Tony Blair was used, combining parts of his statements in the House of Commons about Air France Flight 4590 and the Great Heck rail crash.
The M96 motorway, a converted airfield used by the Fire Service College for training, was used as a stage for the M25.
Director Gabriel Range explains how he and the production team went about realistically recreating the disaster:
Radio Times called the film: "Scarily realistic ... so plausibly done that it should really have a warning flash in the corner of the screen saying 'fiction' in big red letters. ... It works as a smart riveting drama and also as a warning of the power of the financial markets".[3] A reviewer in The Guardian wrote that it was "an excellent and horrible film ... Indeed, if there was anything that betrayed the fictional nature of The Day Britain Stopped, it was its craftedness and lack of sensationalism."[4]
In response to the programme's original broadcast, the following statement was issued by National Air Traffic Services:
In 2012, Ridley Scott and Steve Zaillian planned to make a film inspired by The Day Britain Stopped at 20th Century Fox.[5]