70s and 80s society was awash with Cold War paranoia, and this was reflected in much of the TV at the time; the threat of nuclear war making for particularly gripping drama across the genres – influencing sci-fi, horror and general drama of the time.
One of this blog’s readers recalls a particularly unusual drama, seemingly a one-off, aired on UK TV in the late 80s or early 90s, done in the style of a documentary, on the subject of a war between the USA and the EU (EEC at the time of course).
The details we have are as follows:
“I seem to remember it being caused by the US using battlefield nukes against the East Germans which the West Germans considered an attack on themselves and off it all went. I think it was in a format that used fake news reports, I remember a mention of a combined French and German infantry division called “The Charlemagne Division” going into action against the US army that was stationed in Germany and possibly a segment on a French aircraft carrier being sunk.“
Does this ring a bell for any of our readers? We’d be very keen to find this piece of UWTV, so feel free to share this post as wide as you can, and if you recall this yourself or have any further details, please contact us or post a response here!
Update (28/11/20)
Thanks to Twitter user @Araminta_Kane we have managed to identify this show – it was a BBC-produced film aired in 1993 titled Europe on the Brink:
Europe on the Brink (includes YouTube video in Italian)
According to the link above:
“A drama set in the year 2013 which postulates that Europe has become rich and unified with Berlin Wall-style fortifications around it to keep out immigrants. It is also on the brink of war with the United States. The projected scenario is based on the work of strategic thinker Jonathan Eyal.”
The film does not seem to have been screened again since its airing on the BBC in 1993, and has never been released on DVD – so far we have only managed to locate a version of it on YouTube dubbed into Italian, which can be viewed on the above link.
Huge thanks to @Araminta_Kane (nice Moondial reference in that username) for identifying this elusive production for us – and if you can help us out further by hooking us up with the original English language version, please do not hesitate to comment here or send us an email!
Unidentified Weird TV 
I have a similar memory, it may actually be from the (early?) 1990s, it was shown in Australia too. It looked decent but was probably fairly low budget made for TV fare. It was tied up with the fall of the Soviet Bloc and the “End of History” talk that was around then. Without the USSR, the USA & EU become rivals some 10 or more years in the future. It was documentary style, lots of talking heads but there was also mocked up news clips plus stock military footage. There was a new US president who was the first latino in the job when things start to kick off. The EU has become a cohesive federation and is renamed. If I think of what it was called I’ll let you know.
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Possibly “Europe on the Brink”?
https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/0a65ac6e3f664deeb18ce7c04984208b
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The following comment is from Christopher Bentley (https://gravatar.com/girlsofthegoldeneast), who was unable to submit the response via WordPress so contacted us to post on his behalf:
Inspired by some comments I have seen from others on a YouTube video related to the new film ‘Civil War’, where some were surmising why California and Texas may end up on the same side as each other and I was postulating that it may be down to the commonality of being both states in the broadly Hispanic part of the country, my thoughts went back to a half-forgotten drama serial I’d seen a few decades ago imagining a war in the near to medium-term future with the UK and U.S. on opposing sides, respectively allied to various other European nations and to fellow Hispanic nations in the Americas, as a clear memory I had was of a Spanish-speaking U.S. President, maybe indicating that Spanish had replaced English as the official language. ‘Europe On The Brink’ looks pretty close to that scenario, so thanks UWTV and Araminta Kane, of course, for that identification.
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