Countdown to Looking Glass

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Countdown to Looking Glass is a Canadian made-for-television movie that premiered in the United States on HBO on 14 October 1984 and was also broadcast on CTV in Canada. The movie presents a fictional confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union over the Strait of Hormuz, the gateway to the Persian Gulf. The narrative of the film details the events that lead up to the initial exchange of nuclear weapons from the perspective of an on-going news broadcast.

The film stars Patrick Watson, Scott Glenn and Helen Shaver as three of the newscasters. The film also features real-life newscasters Eric Sevareid and Nancy Dickerson as themselves. Also appearing as themselves are former United States Senator Eugene McCarthy and then-United States Representative Newt Gingrich.

Unlike similar productions such as the previous year's Special Bulletin and the later Without Warning, the producers of this film decided not to make the entire production a simulated newscast, but instead break up the news portions with dramatic narrative scenes involving Shaver. The appearance of real-life newscasters, as well as noted CBC host Watson (although he does not appear as himself in this film) led additional authenticity to the production.

The film ends with the apparent commencement of a full nuclear exchange between America and the Soviet Union and the activation of a fictional version of the Emergency Broadcast System, the then-current warning system that was designed to take over radio and television broadcasts in the event of a nuclear war.

One of the CTV rebroadcasts of the film in the mid-1980s occurred only days before an actual confrontation in the Persian Gulf occurred between American and Soviet ships, although the outcome of the real-life dispute was rather more positive.