ABSTRACT
An American Broadcasting Companies docudrama, "The Day After," directed by Nicholas Meyer and written by David Humi, drew record audiences for a television movie. The first showing of "The Day After" coincided with a major effort by peace groups to halt the deployment of new US missiles in Europe. The film is a scare piece, and its message about the horror of nuclear war cannot be dismissed. An ambitious thirteen-part documentary from WGHB in Boston, "Vietnam: A Television History," was shown on public broadcasting stations across the nation. The film supplements its pictorial history with extensive narrational interpretations and comments plus accounts and evaluations of assorted actors from both sides of the struggle. The docudrama stages a full-scale nuclear war on a city in Kansas; the documentary reports and reviews events of the Vietnam War and draws on assorted witnesses and commentators to supplement the historical materials.
