I loved The Day The Earth Caught Fire (1961)(henceforth TDTECF): end of the world scifi, "journalism procedural" (if that's a thing) with a dollop of the kitchen sink drama realism of late 50s/early 60s UK cinema. 5 stars!
I recognized the voice of an extremely minor character... "Hey! That copper's Michael bloody Caine!" (ALT TEXT for picture: scene from TDTECF, a car stopped at a checkpoint at night. Police officer (played by Michael Caine) standing next to the driver's window, pointing ahead.)
Looking for more info on the film, I came across a review of TDTECF, which mentions so many other UK scifi films of the 1950s & 60s that I'm going to end up adding to my wishlist, and a few I might even nominate for the . (A few, like Gorgo (1961), have already been shown in .)

The EOFFTV Review - The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961)

Other UK (mainly) scifi/horror films mentioned in that review (linked to their pages on Eggplant/NeoDB):

"the delirious Konga (1960)"
"the fun Gorgo (1961)"
"the eminently forgettable What a Whopper! (1961) and Paradisio (1962)"
"Wolf Rilla’s Village of the Damned (1960)"
"Joseph Losey’s excellent The Damned (1961)"
"Anton M. Leader’s Children of the Damned (1963)"
"It Happened Here (1965) (a remarkable pseudo-documentary documenting a Nazi invasion of the UK during World War II)"
Lord of the Flies (1963)
"the early James Bond films"
"comedies like Mr. Drake’s Duck (1950)" {like TDTECF, directed by Val Guest}
"trashy but fun B-movies like The Gamma People (1956), Fiend Without a Face (1957) and Behemoth the Sea Monster (1959)"
"serious attempt by British cinema to confront the fears raised by nuclear weapons {...} Seven Days to Noon (1950)"
The Quatermass Xperiment (1955) {also by Val Guest, shown in 25 January 2025}
"even more impressive sequel, Quatermass 2 (1957)"
"the excellent crime thriller Hell is a City (1960)"
"many of the better British SF films of the decade – Unearthly Stranger (1963), The Night Caller (1965), Invasion (1966), Privilege (1967)."