The 1980s were the decade that quietly wired the world we now live in, and this third instalment of Made in the 80s focuses specifically on Britain's outsized role in that transformation. It's a period often flattened into shoulder pads and Thatcher soundbites, but the real story is stranger and more consequential: a nation that had just lost its manufacturing base ended up incubating some of the most important computing and networking breakthroughs of the century.

The episode traces the birth of the World Wide Web — Tim Berners-Lee's work at CERN had deep British engineering roots — alongside the rise of the ARM architecture, the low-power chip design that now sits inside virtually every smartphone on Earth. It also digs into the home computing boom driven by the BBC Micro, Sinclair, and Acorn, machines that taught a generation of British kids to program and seeded an entire industry.

What makes this worth watching over a generic "80s nostalgia" reel is the through-line: the documentary connects specific engineering decisions and government-funded projects to outcomes we still feel daily. It's a serious look at how Britain, despite economic decline elsewhere, punched wildly above its weight in silicon and software.