Sinead Cusack, Bill Paterson to star in new BBC2 drama ’37 Days’
New First World War drama ’37 Days’ for BBC2.
BBC Two has commissioned new drama serial, ’37 Days’ from writer Mark Hayhurst (Hitler On Trial) and Hardy Pictures.
The factual drama reveals the complex behind-closed-doors story of the outbreak of the First World War and stars a stellar cast, including Ian McDiarmid, Sinead Cusack, Tim Pigott-Smith, Bill Paterson and Kenneth Cranham.
Covering the final weeks before the outbreak of war, 37 Days follows the rapidly changing crisis through the eyes of the principal players, during a hot summer, from the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on 28 June 1914, to the declaration of war between Britain and Germany on 4 August.
The drama serial will overturn orthodox assumptions about the war’s inevitability. Such a disaster did not happen by chance, and nor was it a foregone conclusion. It took considerable effort and terrific ingenuity, as well as staggering bad luck, to destroy a system that had kept the general peace in Europe for the 99 years that followed the Battle of Waterloo and the fall of Napoleon.
